It Takes a Thief

by Liz Wolfe

  From this height, she had an excellent view of the grounds inside the wall. One corner held a stack of firewood. It looked to be a couple of cords and was stacked to within a few feet of the top of the wall. That would be good for getting out, but she first had to get in. The branch she stood on was higher than the top beam. There was no way she could get close enough to dive between the beams. But she might be able to dive over the top beam. That meant she’d be falling to the ground from a height of about eleven feet. Not all thatdifferent from dismounting from the uneven parallel bars. Except that she’d be landing on hard ground rather than the closed-cell foam pads used in gyms.

  There was no other way. Zoe edged out onto the limb as far as she thought it would hold her weight. She bounced on the limb a couple of times, wincing at the creaking of the wood. She backed up several steps and took a deep breath, then blew it out. She balanced herself, took a final glance at the ground on the other side of the wall, and ran lightly down the branch. When she reached the point she’d chosen earlier, she launched herself into the air and sailed over the wall, clearing the beam by inches. Zoe tucked into a ball then extended just in time for her feet to hit the ground.

  The shock of her landing reverberated from the soles of her feet through her ankles and up her shins. She took a minute to catch her breath. She’d tied her boots as tightly as possible around her ankles, and even though she wanted to unlace them, she knew better. The pain was abated by the fact that the alarms hadn’t been activated. Now to get into the mansion.

  All the windows on the back of the mansion were wired with alarms. She might be able to circumvent them, but it would be tricky. She headed along the side of the building and was rewarded with a partially open window on the ground floor. There was no sign of alarms, probably because the window was too small for anyone to get through but a child—or her.

  She jumped up and grabbed the edge of the windowsill with both hands, then pulled her body up. Peering through the partially open window, she recognized the small guest bathroom. She balanced on one hand and pushed the window farther open. Her arms quivered with the strain when she straightened them and pulled one leg up and through the opening. Resting her hip on the windowsill, she pulled the other leg inside. She had to turn sideways to get her hips through the opening. Her shoulders were an even tighter fit and she almost ripped her shirt squeezing through.

  She opened the door a crack and looked out. The wide hallway was dim, lit only by a bright light that splashed from a set of open French doors. If she remembered correctly, those doors led to an enormous ballroom. She slipped down the hallway and stopped behind a statue where she could see part of the interior of the ballroom.

  Rows of folding chairs were arranged in semicircles facing a raised platform where an older man stood at a podium and spoke to the group. Zoe had never seen him before. The Triumvirate sat in chairs positioned behind the speaker. She scanned the room, which was only half-full in spite of having so many people in it. These people were obviously involved in the Order. And she knew Ethan would want to knowwho they were. Unfortunately, there was no roster conveniently lying around.

  The ballroom was open to the second floor and Zoe saw an ornate railing that ran the length of one wall. At either end were heavy velvet drapes.

  She slipped from her hiding place, ran silently down the hallway, turned left, and moved down another hallway to the wide curving staircase that led to the upper three floors. At the second floor, she turned right and hugged the wall until she reached the velvet drapes. She pulled her credit card–sized camera from her fanny pack and clicked off photos of the people attending the meeting. She included a few of the older man and the Triumvirate on the platform for good measure, although she mostly got photos of their backs. Everyone began applauding, then they rose from their seats and milled about. Time for her to disappear.

  She ran down the stairs and headed for the guest bathroom. She twisted the knob, but it didn’t move. Someone called out that they’d be out in a moment. She could hear people talking as they left the ballroom. And there was no place to hide until the person in the bathroom came out.

  She slipped down the hallway and opened the door to the room where she’d always met with the Triumvirate. She flipped on the light, left the door open, and dropped into the chair in front of the desk.

  Slouching down, she propped her feet on the desk and rested her head on the back of the chair with her eyes closed. She heard the door close just moments later.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you, obviously.” Zoe turned her head to look at Weisbaum, but didn’t take her feet off the antique desk.

  “Do you mind?” He glared pointedly at her feet.

  “Sorry.” She took her time putting her feet on the floor. “So, what’s next?”

  “That hasn’t been decided yet.”

  “Well, I get bored just hanging around all day, you know?” She grinned at him. “And I don’t like to stay around too long in a place where I’ve pulled a job.”

  “You assured us that no one would even know that you’d taken the document from the museum.”

  “Probably they won’t, but you never know.”

  “How did you get in?” Weisbaum asked.

  “Through the front door.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Well, not if it’s standing open.”

  “The door was open?”

  “Didn’t I just say that? Must have been because of your party.” She waved a hand and stood. “I closed it and turned on the alarm, but you might want to find out who’s leaving your door open. Anyone could have walked in here.”

  “I’ll be sure to check into it. And we should have another job for you soon. In the meantime, why don’t you just enjoy your visit to Italy?”

  Zoe watched while Weisbaum glanced out at the hallway, then held the door for her.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  December 22, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  “Senator Hemings, nice to see you again.” Jeremy Olson nodded. “I understand you want to view the Computer Server Room today.”

  Hemings smiled and shook Olson’s hand. “I’m kind of a wannabe geek, I guess. I’ve heard you guys have some impressive equipment here.”

  “Yes, sir, that we do.” Olson led Hemings down a wide hallway. “So, you like computers?”

  “Oh, I love them. Just don’t understand them very well.” He laughed. “I majored in political science instead of computer science in school.” He didn’t add that he’d been a hacker in his youth. He’d outgrown that, but he still played with computers a lot. In fact, he was pretty certain that they’d never let him in the computer room if they had any idea what his capabilities were.

  “I’m not much with computers myself,” Olson admitted. “I know enough to get around and do my job and that’s about it.” Olson slipped his key card into the reader, then opened the door.

  The room held banks of servers with blinking green and amber lights. One wall was filled with tables that held keyboards and monitors.

  “No people?” Hemings asked. “These things run themselves?”

  “Almost, from what I understand. But not entirely. The computer operators are housed in the room next door. They monitor everything from there. The workspace in here is only used occasionally.”

  “Impressive,” Hemings said. He walked around the room pretending to look over the equipment. After a few minutes, he paused and leaned against the wall, one hand rubbing his chest.

  “Everything all right, Senator?” Olson asked.

  “Just a little angina.” Hemings shook his head, then gasped for breath. “Maybe I’d better sit down for a minute.”

  Olson led him to a chair at the worktables. “You sure you’re all right? Maybe I should call someone.”

  “No, it’s nothing, really. I’ll just take one of my pills and it’ll go away.” He patted his pockets with a hand and grunted. “Must have left them in m
y overcoat.” He breathed in a way that sounded like he wasshort of breath. “I hung it up at Susan’s desk.” His hand rubbed at his chest again. “Think you could go get them for me?”

  “Sure. I’ll be right back.” Olson ran out of the room and Hemings straightened. He pulled a handheld device from his breast pocket and ran a thin cable from the device to a connection in the back of one of the servers. He tapped commands into the unit with a stylus and waited a moment, then tapped in more commands to find the directory of files he wanted. The unit started to download data and he turned to the door. Olson wouldn’t be gone more than four minutes and he wasn’t sure how long it would take the files to transfer. The unit beeped just as the doorknob turned. Hemings disconnected the cable and replaced the unit in his pocket as he ran back to the worktable and slumped into the chair.

  “Thanks.” Hemings didn’t have to fake the sheen of sweat on his forehead or the slight tremor of his hand as he took the glass of water from Olson. “The pills are in the breast pocket.” Olson found the pills, opened the bottle, and handed one to Hemings.

  Hemings placed the pill under his tongue and smiled tremulously at Olson. After a few minutes he straightened. “Damned inconvenient.” He stood up. “Fortunately it’s nothing serious, just painful until I take one of those little pills. And it doesn’t happen allthat often.”

  “That’s good to know, sir.”

  “Well, I don’t want to keep you from your duties. Thanks for showing me this.” He waved his hand at the equipment. “I wish I understood even a little of it.” He laughed and Olson joined him.

  “Anytime, sir. And have a Merry Christmas.”

  “Thank you. Happy Holidays to you, as well.” Hemings shook Olson’s hand and walked out with all the files pertaining to The Order tucked in his pocket.

  December 23, Outside Bern, Switzerland

  Dr. Margot Epstein made a notation on her PDA and looked up at the sound of the automatic door swooshing open.

  “Capo, has it been three months already, or are you just here for an update?” she asked, dropping her PDA into her lab coat pocket.

  “It’s time for my booster, but I’d love an update, as well.”

  “Of course. I must have lost track of time the past few months.”

  “Time flies.” Capo grinned. “But, fortunately, not for us.”

  “And it’s a good thing. There’s so much work to do.” But she wasn’t complaining. She loved her work. Lived for it, really.

  “This is the latest batch?” Capo asked, gesturing to the racks of gallon-sized cylinders.

  Margot nodded. “A grand total of three thousand, after the first culling. Pretty evenly distributed between the peacekeepers, domestics, and laborers.”

  “That is good news, indeed. Over thirty percent of them took.”

  “Our results are getting better with each batch,” Margot agreed.

  “When is the second culling?” Capo asked.

  “Another two months. By then we’ll be able to test each fetus for defects. Hopefully, we’ll still have two thousand left after that.”

  “So we should end up with at least a thousand that will go full-term?”

  “At least,” Margo said. “Let’s get your shot out of the way and then I’ll show you our progress.”

  Capo followed her out of the lab and down a wide hallway to her office. She keyed in a code, and opened the small refrigeration unit behind her desk.

  Capo rolled up a sleeve and sat on the small sofa. Margot tied rubber tubing around his upper arm, drew fluid from the vial, and slid the needle painlessly intohis vein. She withdrew the needle, pressed a cotton ball to the puncture, and discarded the syringe in a container marked with a biohazard emblem.

  “There. You’re good for another three months.”

  “Can you imagine what people would pay for this?” Capo asked.

  “Just about anything, I’d think.” Margo glanced at her reflection in the glass door of her office. “Aging only one year for every ten? I know I’d pay a lot for it. Fortunately, I don’t have to.”

  “Before, I worried that I’d never live long enough to finish my work.” Capo rolled down his sleeve and buttoned the cuff. “Now, I know I will.”

  “Another hundred years or more for each of us.” Margot nodded. The virus she’d injected into Capo’s arm carried a special strand of DNA. The virus would attack certain cells, allowing the DNA to invade those cells so that they reproduced differently, eventually replacing the original DNA and slowing the aging process to a tenth of what would normally occur.

  “I’m anxious to see our progress.” Capo rolled down his sleeve and buttoned the cuff.

  “Do you want to see the embryo room again or go to the gestational area?”

  Capo laughed. “Embryos aren’t all that interesting. Let’s have a look at the gestations.” He held the door for her and followed her down the hall to anelevator. They rode the elevator down one floor and emerged into a vast space.

  “These are just past the final culling.” Margot gestured at the Plexiglas cylinders. “I expect at least ninety-five percent of them to deliver.” In each five-gallon cylinder, a fetus floated in a special biochemical bath. The fetuses were well formed and appeared much like a newborn infant. They would be transferred to two successively larger cylinders before the process was completed. Margot walked past the line of cylinders to the far end of the room and opened a door.

  “These are the two-year-olds.” Margot spoke as if she was the mother of the two hundred fetuses. “I just received the report on their development and it’s excellent. Normal reflexes, growth, and brain activity consistent with five-year-old humans.”

  “It seems we are losing fewer with each batch,” Capo said.

  “True,” Margot agreed. “We’ve had great success in refining the DNA strands used to fertilize the ovum. The next batch will be our first attempt at cloning.”

  “You expect it to go well?”

  “Absolutely. I imagine we’ll lose a few more to environmental problems, but we won’t be losing the percentage that we normally expect when the ovum DNA is stronger than the fertilizing DNA.”

  “This looks different from the last time. Have you instituted changes?” Capo asked.

  “You have a sharp eye.” Margot nodded. “We increased the movement of the biochemical bath. It gives the fetuses something to work against, which develops their muscles better.” She moved to the end of the room and opened another door. “And here are the ones we’ll deliver next.”

  “Your babies.”

  Margot laughed. “Not all of them are literally my babies, although I think about a quarter of them are.” She had used her own eggs for a section of this group of fetuses. The hormone treatments to increase her egg production for several months and the extraction procedure had been difficult, but well worth it. “Twenty of these are my own.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Capo.” Margot shook her head and smiled. “I have no idea. There are records, of course, but I’d never personalize this procedure to the point of knowing which ones were created with my ovum.” The lie slid off her tongue smoothly, but, in truth, she knew exactly which ones had been created from her eggs. She kept track of them. Not in the computer records, of course. But in her mind. She’d even given some of them pet names. The ones created from her ovum had a substantially higher success rate than the others. She suspected that was due to the anti-aging virus she and

  Capo were injected with and planned a series of tests to confirm that.

  “How long until delivery?” Capo asked.

  The fetuses were about the size of a young teenager. They all showed the beginnings of puberty with the development of secondary sex characteristics. The females were developing breasts although they would never be very large. One of the side effects was that most of them were almost androgynous. The males had all shown an incredibly low sperm count and while the females had ovaries and produced eggs, most had no uterus. Margot had pl
anned to mate some of them, but she’d had to do it in vitro. The first batch had not gone well; she’d lost almost ninety percent of the eggs she’d fertilized, and none had survived past six months in the biochemical bath.

  “These will deliver in about five months,” Margot said. “I think this is the best batch yet. The Peacekeepers are developing exceptionally well. And the Domestics and Laborers have improved with each batch.”

  “Psychologically, as well?” Capo asked.

  “We haven’t had any psychological problems since the first batch that had to be terminated.” Margot shrugged. “It wasn’t a surprise. We expected some difficulties in the beginning. But we’ve worked out the kinks now. The last three batches have all been thesame psychologically. I’d call it semisentient.”

  “So, they are self-aware to some degree?”

  “It appears so, but they all subvert their self-awareness to the wishes of the masters. They appear to be content with that,” Margo said.

  “Like a dog, then?”

  “Probably a slightly higher level than that. Certainly with more intelligence and ability.”

  “Good. They will serve us well, then.” Capo nodded. “Just as we serve the Legacy.”

  December 24, Iraq

  “We are almost ready,” Ziyad said. “And slightly ahead of schedule.”

  “Good. The infidels’ next president is proceeding with his inaugural plans,” Ayman said.

  “He would be an even greater enemy than the last president. But we will prevent that.”

  “And the virus is ready now?”

  Ziyad nodded. “It is even more than I had hoped for. Very fast acting, so the infidels will watch all their leaders suffer and die on television.”

  “What we are doing will change the face of the world,” Ayman agreed.

  “But first we must devise the delivery method. The problem is that Rashid cannot carry the device on himself. It’s too large and he will have to pass through a security check.”

  “Then we will have to find another way. There must be somewhere we can plant the device in advance of the ceremony.”