As he usually did, Thomas was enjoying the chance to play up his heroic brilliance. I decided to play along, for the simple reason that it was the only way to keep him talking and eventually find out what I wanted to find out, so I stowed my growing irritation and pasted a bland smile on my face.
“So, what was the hard part?” I prompted.
“We don’t have Solovyov’s DNA. Or, more accurately, we didn’t.”
“Aren’t DNA profiles kept on file with MetSec and other agencies?” I asked.
“Generally speaking, yes. But remember what’s unique about Solovyov’s DNA.”
I realized what he was saying. Like the other Eleven, Solovyov maintained his immortality by stealing the bodies of younger people, transferring his consciousness into their minds and then wearing them like a costume. To check his DNA, we’d actually have to get a sample from the particular body he was using at the relevant time. And Solovyov preferred to target vulnerable populations, making it more likely that no one would look for the missing person—making them effectively impossible to track.
He was, in essence, a body thief, and thieves never allowed their DNA to be tagged. Not if they were good thieves.
Edward, of course, knew nothing of any of this. He frowned at Thomas. “What?”
Thomas conveniently failed to hear him. “I ran every known image of him through missing persons databases, hoping to match his face to someone with a DNA profile on record. No luck there, he seems to pick victims who are truly anonymous. But then it hit me.”
He waited expectantly, so I nodded. “Go on. How’d you do it?”
“He used to be an important diplomat, the Arbiter of Shaanxi.”
“Damn,” I said. “Where Xi’an is located.”
“I’m glad to see you’re paying attention. Yes, the same city where Jovani Pang was based. Well, to serve as a diplomat, he had to provide all his personal information to the relevant authorities… including a blood sample.”
Edward frowned in confusion. “But those files wouldn’t be accessible to… oh.”
Thomas was grinning broadly. He had hacked his way into some of the most secure government files in the solar system to access Solovyov’s DNA profile. The profile of his most recent host, before the mind-transfer I’d witnessed myself.
“Alright.” I nodded. “That’s fairly impressive. So, you were finally able to compare Jovani Pang’s DNA with Ivan Solovyov’s. Did you find what I think you found?”
“I don’t know what you think I found. But if you’re not a fool, then yes, I found it.”
“There’s a lot in this conversation I don’t understand,” Edward said. “In fact, from what little I can piece together, there’s a lot I don’t even want to understand. Just tell me this. Is Jovani Pang a blood relative of Ivan Solovyov’s?”
“Oh yes,” replied Thomas. “He’s definitely a blood relative. To be specific, he’s Solovyov’s son.”
15
Thomas certainly enjoyed his little revelation, even if it did involve disclosing highly classified information in front of someone who wasn’t really cleared to hear it. The direct result was a little complicated. We had to go through the charade of letting Edward know he’d been briefed on something highly classified, telling him that we wouldn’t be explaining any of it, and asking him if he understood the consequences of repeating any of it to anyone.
“We have the exact same procedure in Section 5,” he told us. “I understand the consequences. If I repeat any of what I heard I’ll be prosecuted—although, to be clear, I didn’t understand any of what I heard well enough to repeat it.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid it isn’t exactly the same as Section 5. We’re a field team, not intelligence analysts. We don’t actually prosecute people.”
“Oh.” His face was somehow sober and stunned at the same time as he picked up on the implication that he would simply be killed if he ever talked. “Well, uh… don’t worry, guys. I know how to keep a secret.”
I clapped him on the back. “I know you do. And really, Edward, don’t worry about it. As long as you keep your mouth shut, we won’t ever have to mention it again.”
He swallowed heavily and got quiet on us. Thomas left, still quite pleased with himself and what he’d managed to find out. I left Edward to himself for a while so he could process, but as the sun was setting, I came back into the living room and sat down across from him.
“Everything okay, Edward?”
“Yeah, I’m alright. This spy stuff is kind of heavy, though. You know?”
I nodded. “Sure. When I first met this outfit, they gave me the same speech. It’s standard.”
He looked straight at me. “What section did you say you were with again?”
My dataspike chimed a notification, and I raised my hand to tell him to hold on. It was a message from Veraldi.
Tycho, do you have any idea where Andrea is? No one can seem to find her.
I frowned and sent my reply. I haven’t seen her. Haven’t heard from her either. I’ll let you know if I do.
“Is everything okay?” asked Edward.
“I’m not sure,” I replied. It wasn’t like Andrea to disappear. When she went off on her own for some reason, she told us she was leaving. Of course, her mother Katerina had disappeared entirely for several years. When she turned up at last, she was in service to the Eleven.
Understood, replied Veraldi. Andrew’s relieving you in the morning.
“We’ve got a missing agent,” I told Edward. “It’s probably nothing, but we should be especially alert tonight just in case this is enemy action. Stay away from the windows tonight, okay?”
“I always do. I’m not going to forget that car bombing any time soon.”
I went over to the windows and peered out at the street. There wasn’t any sign of anyone watching the house. There was hardly anyone out at all for that matter. My dataspike chimed again, and I was surprised to see it was a message from Andrea.
It’d been scheduled for automated delivery, timestamped over nine hours earlier. I couldn’t read it immediately because the message was in a cipher. I recognized it right away, although I hadn’t received a message like this in quite some time. Andrea’s message was encoded using an old Arbiter protocol, a code the members of Section 9 wouldn’t be expected to know. The message read 5693-6R-R2-HUR-28X-69, followed by a set of map coordinates.
I was stunned. Why would Andrea send me a message in a code the other members of Section 9 didn’t know how to read?
The code wasn’t all that sophisticated, and Thomas could certainly crack it. Andrew Jones would be able to do it too. But they wouldn’t know what sort of code it was when they looked at it, and that would delay them a little. The only person who would was me, and that could only mean one thing—Andrea didn’t want the others to read this message. Not only had she disappeared; she sent me a message for my eyes only.
That meant time was of the essence.
I went back into the living room. “Edward, I’m going to need to work on something for a little bit. Can you entertain yourself?”
“No problem,” he replied, although he gave me a questioning look, which I ignored. I went into the kitchen and looked at the message again while searching my memory for how the cipher worked:
5693-6R-R2-HUR-28X-69
This wasn’t anything complicated, it was a simple substitution code for basic situations where one Arbiter might need to communicate discreetly with another. What it said was this: Find it to get in.
So, she wanted me to find something—and she wanted me to “get in” whatever I found, which could mean anything from a box to a building to an electronic device. The coordinates she’d given me must lead to whatever I was supposed to find. I checked the coordinates on my map and found that they led to a villa just outside of Paris.
I needed to get there now, not later. On the other hand, I couldn’t exactly leave Edward alone. Nor could I ask the other members of Section 9 for help, not when Andrea had gone o
ut of her way not to include them in this message.
That meant waiting for morning, letting Andrew Jones relieve me without saying a word, and then slipping off to Paris before anyone could give me another assignment. I didn’t like lying—or omitting the truth—from Section 9 teammates. Even so, I could only assume that Andrea had some good reason for handling this situation the way she had. On top of that, the fact that I was being trusted with secret instructions was a real vote of confidence, after all the muscle jobs Andrea had been assigning me in recent weeks.
I didn’t believe in coincidence, and neither did Andrea. That meant the cipher was tied to her disappearance. I spent a long and restless night checking the windows repeatedly while Edward slept, my heart beating like a drum, insistent in my ears. There would be no sleep, and even if I could have dozed off, I wouldn’t have. I can overcome a long night. I can’t overcome being late for Andrea—or whoever waited for me at that villa.
When Andrew showed up the next morning, breezy and sarcastic as ever, the first words out of his mouth were, “Looking crisp. Real secret-agent material.”
I laughed, and that was a mistake. He acted suspicious at my lack of irritation and delayed my departure, trying to nudge me into lashing out as he prodded and poked at my appearance, my manner, and even if I was rushing off to see Andrea, which hit close to the mark.
Andrew’s teasing sense of humor used to irritate the hell out of me, but right then I didn’t have the time for it. I played along. “I have to get going. I didn’t get any sleep last night, don’t want to look”—I gave the vain Andrew a searching look—“worn.”
He walked over to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. “Are you saying I look old? I don’t look that old…”
I walked out the door while he was checking his face for wrinkles. I seemed to have found Andrew’s secret weakness and filed it away for later. Any advantage, no matter how petty, was an advantage.
With my steps quick and light, I went straight to the airport and booked the next flight for Paris, shutting off my messages to avoid any contradictory instructions. I had at least a day unless there was an emergency, because they’d be expecting me to go home and sleep for a bit after watching Edward all night. Of course, if there was an emergency, I’d have a lot of explaining to do when I got back to London. Section 9 doesn’t really make exceptions for ordinary human needs like sleep, although the odd meal—choked down while moving—is tolerated. Sometimes.
The flight was blissfully uneventful. By making my face closed to questions, I discouraged the beefy tech guy next to me from unnecessary conversation, and was even able to catch a few minutes of fitful sleep. When we landed, I stood, assessed my body—the tingling was already better, thanks to the meds—and stepped out into Paris as one Jean-Paul Baudri.
I bought a train ticket to the suburb in question, got off at my stop, and found myself experiencing another of those moments where reality didn’t quite match my mindset. Around me, leafy streets were crowded with sounds and scents of a once-proud city, now scarred and scabbed by the changes of war and internal conflicts.
“On foot it is,” I said, seeing no reason to get in a vehicle. The air helped clear my head, and the people around me said little, paying me no mind at all in that truly urban disdain that Parisians have perfected. I walked. And then I walked some more, rethinking my choice to avoid a taxi. After what I knew to be ninety minutes, I saw the villa perched on a small hill that rose just above the crowding around it.
“Good angle,” I said, nodding in appreciation to whoever thought to pick the villa for any purpose other than living. It was elevated enough to be defensible and gave a clear view for some distance in every direction. A military choice, set in a suburban locale.
I observed the villa from a safe distance for a little while but saw no evidence that the place was inhabited. All I saw in front of me was a pleasant white building, a single-level of elegant design. It could have any kind of defensive system out there—alarms, IR fields, android proxies—but if it did, Andrea would presumably have warned me.
Even so, I approached it cautiously, looking out for any sign of a trap. When I reached the door without finding any, it made me even more suspicious. I didn’t have to pick the lock because the door opened for my skeleton key. When I got inside, though, I found a display of monitors showing the view in a circle around the house. Whoever lived in this building, they definitely wanted to know who was approaching from all directions. My steps sounded like thunder, or maybe a violation, because the house was aseptic to the point that it looked like a model.
The furniture was tastefully chosen, contemporary but not trendy. The art on the walls was interesting to look at but not wildly imaginative, and when I looked away from each piece, it was forgotten, as if that was the intent.
It was a big place, but none of the rooms had anything I would have described as clutter. There was a living room large enough to host a party. There was a kitchen with top-of-the-line equipment and plenty of counter space, but not a single stain on the counters or the oven. No cooking smells hung in the air, and there was no onion skin or spilled wine or chipped mugs. There was… nothing of a life being lived.
There was a private library, with a carefully chosen selection of classics, plus one or two books Andrea had mentioned casually in conversation, every spine aligned with ruthless precision. Untouched, and likely unread. Like showpieces.
There were at least three bedrooms, plus other rooms that could have hosted guests in a pinch. In every single room, there was exactly the necessary furniture and decoration, nothing extraneous or especially personal. Except for one thing: framed photographs of Andrea, smiling and relaxing with various people I didn’t recognize. I found other clues as well, including notes she’d written to herself and tacked up here and there, such as remember to breathe. If I hadn’t recognized her handwriting, I would never have known she’d written them, but I did recognize it and there was only one conclusion.
This was Andrea Capanelli’s private home. A place she’d never invited me or anyone else from Section 9, a place she had never even mentioned to us.
It was flawlessly clean, but that was likely because she hardly ever stayed here. Section 9 had her staying in safehouses and hotel rooms, and she only got away for a handful of vacations a year. This place was Andrea’s secret heart, the place she went to get away. This was her fortress. Her escape.
Yet she had directed me here today, which could only mean that things were about as bad as they could be. Whatever was going on, whatever the reason for her disappearance, she had left me some sort of message here.
After a quick check through all the rooms in the house, I began a methodical search. Her coded message had told me to “find it” but hadn’t specified what “it” was.
I checked each photo for hidden messages, and I inspected the books I remembered her mentioning. I checked behind the paintings and under her little post-it notes. I checked under every bed in every bedroom, including the master bedroom with the huge wall hanging of a Chinese landscape scene. A thorough search takes time, but I had no reason to think I didn’t have the time, so I went at a slow pace, and then I cut that speed even further, until I was moving through each room like a lengthening shadow.
It was only after I’d been searching for a solid two hours that I decided to sit down on her bed and think about it for a minute. Andrea had hidden something in this house, and she must have hidden it somewhere she thought I could find. Whatever it was, it wasn’t hidden in a spot no one would ever think of.
So why couldn’t I find it?
I reviewed every room of the house in my mind, picturing the layout and the spots I had checked so far. I did come up with a few I hadn’t checked yet where something small like a key drive could conceivably be hidden. When I went through the house again, I didn’t find anything. There was no key drive, no dataspike, nothing. The house was immaculate, without a single item out of place. There was simply nothing there.
I returned to her bedroom and sat on the bed again, sifting the room, the house, and my brain for any hint of something I might have missed.
“If I was Andrea Capanelli, where would I hide something?” I asked, and predictably, there was no answer. If I wanted one person to be able to find it if they knew to look for it, but I also wanted to make sure that no random search of the house would turn it up, where would it be?
Well, first things first—I’d start outside my normal parameters. All the places I’d checked so far could have been checked by anyone. If someone figured out that this house belonged to the field commander of Section 9 and they decided to toss it, they’d do everything I had just done. Andrea must have been concerned about the possibility of a random search like that.
Wherever it was, it wasn’t in any place that would occur to the average person or even to the average intelligence agent. That meant I would have to get more creative to find it. If the house had a drop ceiling… but it didn’t, and that option was just as obvious as all the others.
I let my imagination wander freely, thinking about hiding places from fictional stories about spies and detectives. In that sort of story, walls often had hidden doorways leading to secret tunnels. It seemed far-fetched, but there didn’t seem to be any harm in looking. That wall hanging of a Chinese landscape painting, for instance. In a cheap story about an imaginary spy, that could well conceal a hidden door.
I stood up from the bed, and pulled the wall hanging to the side a little. All I saw was a wall, and I’d checked it before to make sure there was nothing hidden behind the wall hanging. I hadn’t pushed on it, though, so I did that now.
It didn’t push in, but it rattled. Barely.
“Gotcha,” I said, smiling at my achievement. It made a sound like—a sliding door. I placed my hands flat on the surface and pushed to the side, and the door slid over and disappeared into the wall, silent as a spirit. “A secret room. Excessive, even for us, Andrea.”
I stood there for a few seconds, blinking. A secret staircase.
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 106