Singularity

by Bill DeSmedt

  Heeding the god’s call, the Avatar arises.

  Night-walker, Spawn of Darkness, Beast of Evil Heart,

  From the Lower World he arises.

  Insatiable, All-devouring, he arises.

  He seizes me.

  His monstrous jaws engulf my head,

  His great claws pin my feet,

  As wild dogs tear at entrails of their kill, so the Wolf tears me limb from limb . . .

  Jack clicked off the recorder. “Final piece of the puzzle,” he said.

  “I’ll admit, that one’s not so obvious. But it’s got to be the tides.”

  Luciano raised an eyebrow. “The tides, Jack? As in the oceans?”

  “Uh-huh. Tides are just a byproduct of gravity, after all—more specifically, of how gravity grows stronger the closer you get to its source, and vice versa. Take the moon, for instance: its gravity pulls strongest on the piece of ocean nearest to it, so the waters right underneath the moon get lifted up relative to the Earth as a whole.”

  “But there is also a tide on the opposite side of the Earth, is there not?”

  “Right. The waters there are furthest away from the moon. They feel its gravity the least so they tend to stay in place. But since everything else on Earth is getting pulled at more, it’s as if that part of the ocean humps out away from the moon. When all’s said and done, you wind up with two standing waves of seawater moving through the oceans at twelve-hour intervals.”

  “The tides.”

  “Uh-huh. Now picture that same effect, only generated by a gravitational point-source like my micro-hole. The mass is a whole lot less, but so’s the distance. Now, figure Jenkoul stood maybe a meter and a half, two meters tall. And figure back in those days the hole came to within four-five meters of the surface, with him standing right over it. That’d mean—” Jack closed his eyes to do the math. “Um, call it a difference of about one full gravity between the crown of his head and the soles of his feet.”

  From the look on Luciano’s face, he wasn’t seeing the implications. Jack tried again. “Think of it this way: say our friend the shaman weighed eighty kilograms. A one-gravity differential top to toe is going to feel like his head’s been clamped in a vise while a hundred and seventy-five pound weight dangles from his ankles.”

  That came across loud and clear. Luciano gave another of his low whistles. “Poor Jenkoul, no wonder he felt he was being torn apart by monstrous teeth and claws! Lucky for him it was over in an instant.”

  “Except it wasn’t,” Jack said. “Not by a long shot. Oh, sure, the hole itself would hit its apogee and be gone in milliseconds. But the aftermath . . . well, Jenkoul barely made it back out of that swamp alive. In the days to come he nearly died of a raging fever, huge sores all over his body. He showed me the scars. Toothmarks of the Wolf, he called them.”

  “And this too can be explained, I assume?” Luciano said.

  Jack shrugged. “Radiation burns, pure and simple. I told you, that hole is hot. As close as it must’ve come to the surface back then, it’s a wonder it didn’t—What’s the matter, Luciano?”

  “Nothing, Jack, nothing. It’s just that, well, you must admit Jenkoul’s version was far more . . . poetic.” The little Italian sighed. “I suppose I am something of a romantic. Some part of me hates to see all the mysteries of the world fade in the light of prosaic scientific explanation.”

  “Read your Keats; there’s beauty in the truth, too. The world’s got more than enough mysteries as it is. Me, I’ll take all the explanation I can get.”

  Jack chuckled then at his friend’s crestfallen look. “Oh, come on, Luciano. You didn’t seriously believe there was a real Wolf out there waiting for me, did you?”

  The long subarctic summer day was dying. Through thickening light, Yuri poled his canoe along the Khushmo’s densely wooded banks, occasionally checking distance to the target on his handheld’s Global Positioning display. Five kilometers still to go, and upstream at that. But drought had shrunk the swollen torrents of spring to a gentle flow. The river in mid-summer could no longer offer much resistance to a determined traveler.

  Low as it was, the Khushmo still ran fresh and clear, its waters so limpid that the enormous trout drifting motionless in its deep pools seemed almost to be levitating in midair. Above the river’s near-invisible surface, swarms of gnats hovered in clouds dense as evening mist. Beaver paddled through the twilit water, breasting the canoe’s wake on the way to their lodges. From either shore choruses of birdsong floated out across the tranquil current, swelling toward one final crescendo against the onset of night.

  The peace of the river and the Siberian summer evening was lost on Yuri Vissarionovich Geladze. He had no use for wilderness. Cities were where he needed to be. Cities were the home of the well-off, the comfortable, the human sheep. And, so, the natural hunting ground of the human wolves who preyed on them.

  The stray thought prompted him to glance down to where his four-legged passenger—accomplice, more properly—lay sedated beneath the concealing tarp, in a steel cage that took up half the canoe. Prompted him to think, as well, of the strange implement he had been given to do the job. Needless complications of a simple business, all in the name of making the death appear an accident.

  An accident! Yuri shook his head. Accidents, disappearances without trace—his employers simply had no appreciation of the uses of violent death. A killing should instill fear, should intimidate the living even as it silenced the dead. All this effort to ensure that the act would not be known for what it was went against Yuri’s grain.

  Other than that, the plan was sound. Grishin Enterprises had managed the logistics with customary efficiency, even here at the ends of the earth. Rumor had it that Grishin himself had spent time out here some fifteen or twenty years ago. Though what he could have been seeking in this emptiness was beyond Yuri’s imagination.

  No matter, imagination was hardly an asset in Yuri’s line of work. The client’s business was his own . . . until and unless it affected Yuri’s.

  The pole found bottom again. A flex of muscle propelled the craft soundlessly forward through the hush of evening.

  Beneath its canvas shroud, the wolf in the cage dozed fitfully.

  8 | Press Gang

  THIS WAS NOT the moment Marianna would have chosen for the final recruitment drive. The Archon resource was perched on the edge of the government-issue visitor’s chair, voice tight, jaw muscles clenched. None of this seemed to’ve registered on her boss, though: Pete was plowing ahead regardless.

  “Lighten up, Knox, this is no big deal.” Pete was trying his best to sound persuasive, give him that much. Too bad his vocal apparatus wasn’t built for it. “Hey, you eat some caviar, drink some vodka, talk old times, the government picks up your per diem. Piece of cake.”

  “Why don’t I believe that?”

  “You’re right, Jon,” she put in, before Pete could make things worse, “there’s more to it than that. With any luck, Sasha will let something slip that’ll point us to Galina.”

  Those gray eyes probed her a moment. “Look, I’m only saying this one more time: there’s no way on earth the Galya I knew would’ve sold out to your so-called shadow KGB. But, okay, say she did. Say she’s in it up to her earlobes. That’d have to mean Sasha is too, right? So, why would he just go and rat her out?”

  “It’s a long shot,” she admitted, “But you do have a personal relationship with both subjects; it would only be natural for you to ask about her. Plus, your dossiers pretty bulletproof. There’s nothing to connect you to CROM, and we’re the only ones they’re worried about. No one else even knows Galina’s missing.”

  Too complicated by half; it sounded like she’d made it up on the spot. It didn’t help that she had.

  Marianna turned the warmth of her smile up another notch and tried again. “And, there’s always the chance your friends don’t really know what they’ve gotten themselves into. Not the whole of it, anyway. I’d like to think not; Sasha seemed
like a nice enough guy from his e-— I mean, I think he still has good memories of the old days, back in Moscow.”

  That struck a chord. The resource—no, get used to calling him Jon—was thinking about it at least. Now if her boss would only cool his jets.

  No such luck.

  “I’ll level with you, Knox,” Pete said. “There’s no way we can move in on GEI with what we’ve got. The trail’s gone cold on Galina, and other than that Grishin’s squeaky-clean. No links to the oligarchs, no Mafiya ties, nothing.”

  “I didn’t think anybody made it to the top in Russia these days without the one or the other.”

  “Tell me about it. Fact remains, except for maybe these low-level proles,”—he waved at the bullet list of Russian names still displayed on the screen behind him—“we haven’t got squat on Arkady. And he’s too high up the food chain to go in on spec. If we come up empty, his friends on the Appropriations Subcommittee’ll skin me alive. Marianna too.”

  “We don’t know that you’ll turn up all that much, Jon.” Marianna tried to get things back on track. “But anything beats sitting around on our hands.”

  “But I’m a systems analyst; I’ve never worked undercover in my life. You’ve got to have better options you can put in place.”

  “Not by tonight,” Pete said. “And Rusalka’sails tomorrow. Tonight’s our last shot at inserting an operative.”

  “ ‘Inserting an operative.’ That sounds ominous.”

  “Just craft-speak for a pleasant evening’s conversation,” Marianna said quickly. “All we need you to do is get some feel for whether or not our magneto-troika are still Grishin’s guests. We’ll take it from there.”

  “If that’s all, why not just ‘insert an operative’ when Rusalka docks in France, or wherever?”

  “Too long a lead-time,” Pete said. “Lots could happen between now and then.”

  “Between now and when? What does a vessel like Rusalka do—twenty knots? She’ll be in Europe the end of next week.”

  “She’s rated for twenty-eight knots, tops,” Marianna corrected, “but that’s irrelevant. Rusalka’s not a passenger liner. She’s got no schedule to keep. Over the past eleven years, the summer voyages have averaged a month and a half in length, with a max of three in 1997.”

  Pete tapped a few keys and the datawall backed up these statistics with overlaid charts of Rusalka’s North Atlantic peregrinations as far back as 1993.

  “That puts us into mid-September, earliest,” he said. “If Grishin’s planning something, we need to know now.”

  “But what does Rusalka do out there?”

  Pete shrugged. “World’s biggest floating tax dodge. She’s GEI corporate headquarters, so the longer she stays at sea, the harder it is for the IRS-types to keep tabs on Grishin Enterprises.”

  “She’s also part oceanographic research vessel,” Marianna added. “Arkady Grigoriyevich fancies himself something of a patron of the arts and sciences.” That elicited a snort from Pete.

  “Actually,” she went on, “they’ve done some pretty decent science. Published a detailed seismographic survey of the entire Newfoundland Basin four or five years ago. What she’s been doing out there since is anybody’s guess. Sometimes she steams in slow circles. Sometimes she just sits on station. And summer isn’t the only cruise she makes. Altogether Rusalka’spends eight or nine months out of every year sailing the North Atlantic.”

  “Off topic,” Pete cut in again. “Look, Knox, we’re getting wind of something big going down. It’s looking like September’ll be too late. If we re going to move against GEI, now’s the time.”

  “It’s really not much we’re asking, Jon,” Marianna said. “You talk to people for a living. That’s all we want you to do here.”

  “This is certifiable no-risk.” Pete and his two cents again. “Hey, when’s the last time somebody got whacked in the Kennedy Center?”

  “It’s for your country, Jon,” Marianna said. “And for Galya, too. It’s not too late to save her.”

  “Who knows?” Pete leaned forward. “Work with us on this and we might even cut Sasha a break, if he’s not in too deep.”

  Jon was silent for a bit.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said finally. “You want me to sell out an old friend on the off chance that, if I do get him to betray himself, you might go easy on him? Why should I believe that? Based on what? So far, you’ve purloined my email, press-ganged me personally, put Galina under surveillance, Lord knows what else. I just don’t see any basis for trust here, folks, much less a working relationship. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to do your own dirty work—you seem perfectly capable of it.”

  He’d been looking at her as he spoke, but now he shifted his gaze to Pete. “As for my participation, the answer is no.”

  Pete’s face was set hard, unmoving. Only his eyes still gave signs of life, as if glaring out from behind a mask. Marianna knew that look only too well.

  “Pete,” she began, “Maybe if we just—”

  “Marianna, would you excuse us please?”

  “Pete, are you sure . . .?” Don’t do this.

  “Leave us. Now.”

  Was it Knox’s imagination, or did Aristos grow in size as he put on a textbook intimidating stare and leaned across the desktop?

  “I don’t think you appreciate the situation here,” he said.

  “I’m sure you’ll enlighten me in your own good time, Pete. Mind if I check my voicemail first?” He already had his handheld out and was punching in the speed-dial code Mycroft had given him last night.

  “Won’t work in here.” Aristos waved an arm. “The whole building’s shielded. Why’d you think we didn’t just confiscate that gizmo at the door?”

  “Score one for CROM, then.” Knox shrugged and repocketed the little device. “So, okay, go ahead. I’m listening.”

  Aristos settled back in his seat. “What you’ve got to realize is, your Russian friends winding up in detention isn’t necessarily what you’d call your worst-case scenario.”

  “Sounds pretty bad-case to me.” Especially when those terrorism-related detentions had acquired a nasty habit of stretching on indefinitely. “Why, Pete? How were you planning on making it worse?”

  “They could wind up dead.” Aristos’s eyes didn’t move from Knox’s face. “Sasha, right away. Galina, soon as we reacquire her. Look, Knox, it’s not the way I like to do business, but one phone call and Bondarenko goes home from the Kennedy Center in a body bag.”

  Could he mean that? Lord knows, the government had grown more than usually cavalier about due process ever since the World Trade Center attack.

  Aristos was still looking into Knox’s eyes. “Now, you tell me: doesn’t playing ball with us on this work out better all around? Better for your friends. Better for you, too, if it comes to that.”

  Knox repressed an urge to swallow—no telling what biometric scanners this room came equipped with. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you,” he said, “there’s a whole office full of witnesses back in New York that saw your little gopher drag me off to D.C.”

  Aristos grinned unpleasantly. “Oh, there’s lots of stuff can happen short of Interdiction. There’s tax audits and investigation of actions in restraint of trade and indefinite detention as a material witness and such.”

  He splayed his hands on the desk and levered himself to a standing position, eyeing Knox like a water buffalo about to charge. “Goddammit, Knox! All were asking is, you go talk to the man!”

  “Okay, that should be about enough.” Knox rose and addressed the empty air. “Mycroft? You getting all this?”

  “Five-by-five, Jonathan,” a voice issued from the desktop speaker. Aristos jumped as if bitten by a snake. A window popped open on the wall-filling display behind him to reveal a thrice-lifesized image of Mycroft’s smiling face.

  Mycroft had let his image-enhancing software dress him for the occasion: he was resplendent in black tie and gold-lame tux
edo jacket against a background of green baize tables and crystal chandeliers. A game of baccarat was in full swing behind him—very Casino Royale.

  “I’m forgetting my manners,” Knox said, reseating himself and putting his feet up on a convenient, ottoman-sized stack of printouts. “Euripedes Aristos, meet my associate Finley Laurence—Mycroft to his friends. “

  Aristos stared at his datawall in disbelief. “How the fuck—” He began, then stopped when Knox withdrew his handheld from his jacket pocket again.

  “I told you that can’t work here,” he sputtered. “No fucking way you could’ve called out!”

  “I didn’t call out, you did—or rather your console here. Among my handheld’s undocumented features, it can broadcast infrared, using the same protocols as most standard detached keyboards. I had Mycroft preload it last night with a keystroke sequence that instructed your own systems to set up an outside link. We’ve been online, logged into a Net-Meeting session on Archon’s server, ever since you and I started this heart-to-heart.”

  Aristos’s face darkened. He looked as if he were trying to choose from among a repertoire of possible retorts. The one that finally came out was: “Shit!”

  “Yeah, it’s a bitch,” Knox commiserated. “Oh, just so we know where we stand: I’m going to forget all about this conversation if you will. It’s that, or read the transcript on the front page of tomorrow’s Washington Post.”

  He got to his feet. “Time to be going—no, don’t bother getting up; I can see myself out.” He looked Aristos in the eye. “I trust there won’t be any unpleasantness if I just leave the way I came in?”

  Aristos shook his head sullenly and spoke the permissions into his headset mike.

  Knox paused at the door and smiled tightly. “Pete, It’s been real.”