He did.
As soon as the office door closed behind us, he extracted our secret network key from an inside pocket.
I pounced on it. “Thank goodness! Thank you!”
“Be careful,” he cautioned. “I don’t have a fob. I can’t come in with you.”
A shiver of misgiving shook me, but I didn’t have time to waste. “Did you bring the signalling device?”
“Right here.” He held it up.
“Good. Signal me in…” I consulted my watch. “Ten minutes.”
I didn’t wait for his nod before diving invisibly into the void of virtual reality.
The void had no trace of syrupy heaviness this time. A faint idea tickled my subconscious, but I pushed it aside to examine it later.
A whirlwind tour of the local network turned up some data that I was sure would interest the researchers back at Sirius, but my quest lay elsewhere.
Quest. What an odd term for Sam to use.
I slipped through the external firewalls and into the public data stream.
Whoever the Knights of Sirius were, they didn’t seem to be advertising. By the time the blip of the signalling device stabbed its tiny needle of pain into my consciousness, I hadn’t found a damn thing despite my far-flung search.
If I’d been capable of it, I would have been muttering obscenities while I slowly re-formed my consciousness from the scattered trail of data I’d left behind me. I got lost a couple of times on the way back to the unfamiliar network, and by the time the faint whiff of relevant data reached me from a distant tunnel, it was far too late to pursue it.
When I doubled over in my real-world chair, groaning and clutching my head, Kane’s voice penetrated my suffering.
“Aydan, thank God.” His hands gently pushed mine away as he began to massage the fiery points of pain out of my head and neck. “I was afraid you’d gotten lost,” he muttered. “Didn’t you get my signal?”
“I got it. I was just really far away and it’s hard to get back when it’s a strange network and I don’t have an anchor.”
“Can you walk yet? We’re going to be late for our flight.”
“Shit.” I jerked to my feet, staggered sideways, and would have fallen if not for Kane’s strong arm. I blinked slowly for a few seconds before trying again. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine.” I handed him the network key. “You’d better take this.”
He pocketed it carefully, and we hurried out the door.
At the airport, I silently thanked my lucky stars Kane knew what to do. He spoke authoritatively to a few security personnel, and within minutes we were walking out onto the tarmac with our luggage.
I resisted the impulse to stand staring at the large aircraft, its four big engines already bellowing aggressively behind whirling propellers. Its entire rear section stood open to form a wide ramp, and soldiers in Canadian uniforms lined the walls of the plane’s cargo bay.
Everybody was already seated and strapped into webbing that hung from the wall, and Kane strode up the ramp and made his way to a couple of unoccupied seats as if this was an everyday occurrence.
Hell, it probably was for him. I scurried after him, running the gauntlet of eyes and trying not to cringe at the horrendous noise. In minutes our luggage was secured, Kane helped me strap into a seat, and the cargo bay doors closed ponderously.
Kane leaned close to my ear. “C-130 Hercules,” he shouted.
I nodded as if that meant something, then winced when the engines managed an even more earsplitting note. I fumbled in my waist pouch for my earplugs. As I stuffed them into my ears and relaxed, I caught Kane’s smile. I offered him my spare pair, but he smiled again and shook his head, extracting a pair of his own from his pocket.
The plane lurched, rumbling and bumping while the din of the engines swelled, and at last the rough ride smoothed into a heavy, steady vibration that told me we were airborne. I wondered how long it would take. I was uncomfortable already.
Squirming, I replayed Sam’s garbled message in my mind. M.I.T. students in 1961. Sam would have been in his twenties then. I imagined a group of brilliant, idealistic young men adopting the grandiose mission of world peace and the noble title of “Knight”. Now, all these years later, one of the Knights had betrayed them.
But how had they planned to engineer world peace? That ‘sharing information between countries’ thing sounded dicey. Particularly if the countries in question didn’t know they were supplying information to the Knights. Then it sounded a lot like espionage and treason.
And which countries? Sam had mentioned a Chinese Knight, so China for sure. Communist China in the 70s. Hmmm. Canada, obviously, since Sam had said ‘us’.
My heart stepped up the pace. He’d also mentioned the brainwave driven network. They’d deployed to the countries when they developed the network. When Sam said Dr. Cartwright was his ‘counterpart’ in the U.S., what did that really mean? Was Dr. Cartwright one of the Knights, too?
I glanced over at Kane’s somnolent figure beside me. Heaven only knew how he could sleep through the racket of the engines, but his eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell slowly, his arms crossed loosely over top.
I hated to do it, but I had to know. I laid a hand on his muscular forearm, resisting the urge to fondle that yummy bicep instead. His eyes snapped open, his hand hovering near his holster. I made calming gestures and he relaxed, pulling out the earplug nearest to me.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” I half-shouted next to his ear. “Do you know Dr. Cartwright’s first name?”
“Herbert.” His gaze sharpened. “That means something to you.”
I grinned my excitement at him. “Yes. Thanks. Go back to sleep.”
He eyed me with an expression I chose to interpret as amusement, not annoyance, though it probably contained a large measure of the latter. “Is there anything else you want to know before I do?”
“Um…” I turned over possibilities in my brain for a few moments. “No. I don’t think so. I’m really sorry I had to wake you, but that was important.”
“It’s all right.” He reinserted the earplug and leaned back into the webbing again, his eyes drifting shut.
I copied his pose, feigning relaxation while my brain did a little dance of triumph. Now I knew three of the Knights. Sam had said Ivan, Bert, and Gus were dead. Bert could be short for Herbert Cartwright, the freshly deceased doctor. Terry Sherman from China and Sam Kraus from Canada still living.
That accounted for five of the eight. If I could get a list of M.I.T. alumni from the sixties, I could probably narrow down Ivan’s and Gus’s last names pretty quickly, and then I could start running searches for the group of names to see if any of them appeared together with other names who might be Knights.
What else had he said? Something about ‘the mages’, whatever that meant. His wording had been odd. Come on, brain, spit it out.
Something about how I wasn’t supposed to know, I was supposed to be with a Knight.
What wasn’t I supposed to know? And if I was supposed to be with a Knight, did he mean himself? That was a little creepy. I liked Sam, but not that much. Or maybe…
What if Robert was a Knight? But no, that didn’t make sense, he hadn’t even been born in 1961. Unless… Sam had said ‘originally’. Had they adopted Robert as a Knight later? Maybe around the time he started trying to recruit me for Sirius Dynamics?
My train of thought ground to a halt and I stared at the ceiling, hoping to find inspiration in the ugly metal skin. I found none, and prodded my tired mind on to the next thing instead.
The ghost. Sam had also mentioned the ghost. But he hadn’t said ‘ghost’, singular. He’d said ‘ghosts’. At least that part of the conversation remained clear in my mind. He’d said, ‘you have to stop killing the ghosts, you’re killing us’.
I sat up so suddenly Kane jerked awake again. I shook my head and patted his hand remorsefully, and he si
ghed and subsided into the webbing again with a frown.
It was all I could do not to jump up and pace. I vibrated on the edge of the seat instead, filled with queasy excitement.
Us. The Knights were the ghosts. I’d sent a fireball of destruction at the ghost in Macon, and it had vanished from the network.
And when I came out of the network, Dr. Cartwright was dead and Sam was on his knees. I wrapped my arms around myself as queasiness won.
Dr. Cartwright had said they were going to try something in the network to help Betty. And then the ghost had appeared. What if the ghost wasn’t a ghost at all, just Dr. Cartwright’s presence somehow trying to help Betty?
Oh, God.
I’d killed Bert Cartwright. And I’d nearly killed Sam.
Kane’s light touch on my shoulder made me turn to face his look of concern. He leaned over next to my ear. “Are you sick?”
I shook my head miserably and hunched back against the webbing, hugging myself.
That must have been Sam’s presence in the network at Sirius when the ghost appeared for the very first time. No wonder he’d collapsed after I attacked.
But why the hell didn’t he just tell me?
Before I murdered Bert Cartwright?
Chapter 39
By the time the note of the engines finally altered long hours later, I had managed to doze fitfully, but my only reward was a painful kink in my neck and a sore ass. My head throbbed from the constant noise, my ears ached from the earplugs, and rising claustrophobia made me switch to yoga breathing.
Stay calm. Almost there.
I herded my reluctant mind back to what I knew. Dammit, I had more questions than answers. What exactly had Sam meant when he said Terry Sherman was ‘offline’? That implied the Knights were online most of the time. If they were, that was good news for me. But maybe it didn’t mean what I thought it meant.
I was just finishing off my mental to-do list when the landing gear bumped down on the runway. Kane opened his eyes and sat up to stretch, looking refreshed. I suppressed a stab of irritable envy. Must be nice.
When the engines quieted at last and the cargo bay door opened, I gratefully sucked in the exhaust-tinged air and stowed my earplugs back in my waist pouch. Kane was already retrieving his duffel bag and my small suitcase, and we threaded through the stretching, murmuring soldiers to get to the tarmac.
A few formalities in the airport, and I stepped out into the chilly evening like a prisoner released from jail. I glanced up at Kane pacing beside me as I headed for the shuttle. “Where did you park?”
“A row away from you.”
I shot him a suspicious look. “How did you know where I parked?”
He leaned close to whisper. “I’m a spy.” He grinned. “Also, I had the tracer for Stemp’s tracking device.”
I grimaced. “I’ve got to find a plausible way to get rid of that thing.”
The shuttle wove slowly around the rows of cars, and I opted to get off when we arrived at Kane’s Expedition so I could get a few breaths of fresh air on the short walk to my car.
“Damn, that’s fresher than I thought,” I said as the icy breeze blew through my thin jacket. I straightened when a pleasant thought hit me. “Hey, I’ve got a remote starter. I can start warming up my car before I even get there.”
Smirking with the pride of new-car ownership, I drew the fob out of my waist pouch and pressed the button.
I wasn’t sure whether it was the explosion or Kane that knocked me to the ground. I stared up at him, rubbing the brand-new bruise on the back of my head. An orange glow lit the night, accompanied by a deafening chorus of car alarms.
Kane peered down at me, then slowly rolled off my body and sat up. “Think that’ll be warm enough for you?” he asked.
I sat up to gape at the column of withering flame and oily black smoke that marked the remains of my nice new car. Shock dampened my reaction down to numb cynicism. “Yeah. Probably.”
“Come on, we have to get out of here.” He grabbed my arm and hauled me onto my feet. “Run.”
“Why-”
A smaller explosion answered my question as the next car went up.
I grabbed my suitcase and ran.
Much later, I struggled back to a semblance of alertness in the airport security office, where I’d been doing my best imitation of invisibility for the last couple of hours while Kane did all the talking.
He extended a hand and I let him pull me to my feet. “We can go,” he said. “Stemp doesn’t want us to take a chance driving the Expedition, so he sent air transport.”
“God, please not another Hercules.”
“No. A Griffon.”
“I’m really hoping that’s not the mythical beast that’s half lion and half eagle.”
Kane chuckled. “No. It’s a helicopter. We’ll be home in an hour.”
“Thank God.”
When we disembarked on the Silverside Hospital’s helipad, Kane hustled me to the dark van parked nearby. The driver put the vehicle in gear as soon as the doors closed behind us, and Kane and I both stared out the windows, watching for any suspicious movements on the deserted streets. I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly when we drew up to the Sirius Dynamics building.
“I think this is the first time I’ve ever been glad to see this building.”
Kane regarded me with an unreadable expression. “Things must be bad, then.”
“Uh. Yeah. Neither of us is going home tonight.”
He shot me a wry smile. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I was afraid you’d go ballistic when I told you.”
“No, for once we’re on the same page.”
We hustled for the front entrance almost back to back, both of us scanning the quiet street. I didn’t relax until we’d signed for our Sirius fobs and made it through the first set of security doors on our way to Stemp’s office. My shaking legs barely dragged me to the top of the stairs.
“Aydan?” Kane’s voice seemed very far away.
“Just need a snack,” I mumbled, and dragged myself to the lunchroom.
Some orange juice and a couple of granola bars later, we faced Stemp across his desk. He looked offensively wide awake, and it made me hate him even more.
An earlier glance in the ladies’ room mirror had informed me that if I’d looked like something the cat had dragged in this morning, I now looked like something the cat had shit out. Despite my snack, my hands trembled continuously, and the only thing that kept me upright in my chair was the need to ask Stemp one single question.
“Where’s Betty?” The demand burst out of me before he could speak.
The flat eyes appraised me briefly. “In the secured area of the Silverside Hospital, under twenty-four hour guard.”
I held my voice under rigid control. “What do you intend to do with her?”
“Make sure she gets the best supportive care possible until you and Dr. Kraus can find a way to extract your memories from her mind.”
“And how long do we have to do that?”
“As long as it takes.”
Relief melted my bones, and I held myself in the chair through sheer force of will. I slowly stiffened my backbone when I realized it was too good to be true.
“And what happens if she wakes up and wants to see her family? What happens if we can’t get my memories out of her head?”
Stemp met my eyes. “You’ll find a way.”
“But…”
Stemp ignored my protest and turned to Kane. “Report.”
“I want to see her,” I interrupted.
Stemp returned his attention to me. “The guards have orders to let you see her at any time of the day or night.” He ran a hand over his face, briefly revealing the exhaustion his expressionless facade hid. “I give you my word she’s unharmed. May we finish debriefing?”
I gave him a hard stare, but I couldn’t tell if he was lying. My sluggish brain ground through the possibilities, and I realized it didn’t really matter.
If he was telling the truth, Betty was safe. If he was lying, it was already too late.
I nodded and shut up.
Kane rapidly and efficiently outlined the events of the day, and I let his words flow over me. When Stemp turned his unreadable gaze on me again, I propped myself up a little straighter in the chair.
“I don’t have much to add,” I began. “I mentioned last night that something was bothering me about the Macon installation. There were actually a couple of things. The first was that the network… felt… funny.”
“Funny.”
When I didn’t respond right away, Stemp raised an eyebrow. “Can you describe this… funniness?”
“I’m thinking.” I knotted a fist in my hair and tugged gently. “It was… different but too familiar. It… smelled… like something I should know. But I didn’t quite.”
I fully expected Stemp to ridicule me, but he sat back in his chair instead, eyeing me with a frown. “You should discuss this with Smith tomorrow.”
I was nodding when a jolt of remembrance shook me. Smith! What if Kasper was leaking our information to Robert? I could be playing directly into his hands if I told him anything.
I wrapped my hands around my aching head and groaned.
“Ms. Kelly?”
“Sorry. One other thing. Dr. Cartwright… was the ghost. I… He didn’t die of a heart attack. I killed him.”
“What!” Both Stemp and Kane jerked forward in their chairs, staring at me.
“You didn’t tell me that.” Kane’s cop face was as expressionless as Stemp’s.
“No, I just figured it out when we were on the plane,” I said. “Remember when I did the big firestorm here in the network to knock out the ghost’s control?”
Both men nodded, and I continued, “I just attacked its control, not it. In Macon, when the ghost appeared, I was so mad I attacked it. Personally. With the intent to utterly destroy it. And Bert Cartwright dropped dead.”
Kane sat back slowly. “And you figured this out by knowing his first name?”
“Um, no, not exactly…”
How Spy I Am Page 28