Perfect Dark: Initial Vector

by Greg Rucka

  Cassandra DeVries sat behind her desk and stared at the minuscule interface transmitter resting in the palm of her hand and thought about what she was feeling. She was feeling a lot. She was feeling anger, mostly, she knew, of a kind that she hadn’t felt since she was nine. She was feeling humiliation, that particular substrata of the emotion that seemed to derive wholly from a sense of betrayal. She was even willing to acknowledge that she was feeling true sorrow, the mourning ache of an emotion in its death throes. Worst of all, she felt stupid.

  What she wasn’t feeling was love, not for Daniel Carrington, not any longer.

  “Did you really know about it all along?” Velez asked. The question came with an uncharacteristic softness for the woman, as if she might possibly care about what Cassandra was going through at the moment.

  Cassandra took a deep breath, the air in her office still vaguely floral scented. “No.”

  The problem with this, Cassandra found herself thinking, is that it forces everything else into question, as well. The problem with a betrayal like this is that I am now forced to doubt if there was every any sincerity in the man or in our dealings at all.

  Velez surprised her by saying, “I’m sorry.”

  “It was my own fault. He saw my weaknesses and capitalized upon them.” Cassandra used her free hand to take the transmitter from her palm, holding it now between thumb and index finger. “He knew I was lonely, and he knew that what I wanted more than anything else wasn’t a body to brush up against, but a mind capable of engaging my own.”

  She held out the transmitter for Velez, who produced a small anti-static bag from the side of her coat. Cassandra dropped the transmitter inside, watched as the older woman sealed the bag.

  “I’ll see what we can pull from it,” Velez told her, tucking it away.

  “You won’t be able to pull anything from it, I’m afraid. He knows we found it. He’ll have shut down the operation by now.” Cassandra sighed, used her desk to lift herself out of her chair, feeling more tired than she actually was. She moved to the window, and this time didn’t see out of it, but found herself staring at her reflection.

  Pathetic, she thought. You look pathetic, you sound pathetic, and that is because, at this moment, you are pathetic.

  “Desiring affection isn’t a weakness, Doctor DeVries.”

  Cassandra shook her head. “In this case it was.”

  “I have protected people professionally for almost thirty years, Doctor,” Velez said. “Either personally as their guard or as head of their protective detail. From the President of the United States to United Nations ambassadors and some of the most powerful, important people on the planet, I have guarded them all. I have done, in my opinion, an admirable job of it. I’ve learned several things, and one of those things is that there are attacks that cannot be defended against in any fashion or manner, no matter how good the guards or how brilliant the detail.

  “There is no adequate defense for an attack on the heart.”

  “You think he targeted me from the beginning?”

  “It would be foolish to think otherwise, Doctor.”

  The anger Cassandra had been feeling, the anger that had seemed finally to be in abeyance, returned with a flare. Foolish, she thought. I’m foolish, I’m a fool.

  “I should have seen it.”

  “It is not a question of seeing it or not. It is a question of personality. Your personality allows such an attack to succeed. His personality allows him to launch such an attack.”

  “Then it’s my weakness.”

  “You misunderstand. As I said, there is no adequate defense against an attack on the heart. There are only people such an attack will not work against, and you will forgive me for saying so, but those people are uniformly the ones I’ve enjoyed protecting the least, the ones, in my opinion, who have been least deserving of my efforts.”

  Cassandra turned from the window, not hearing Velez for the moment, still feeling the anger, and once again, now, the humiliation. I’m going to hurt him for this, she thought. I’m going to make him remember this, how he used me, and I’m going to make him regret it.

  “Have you been able to locate Doctor Rose?” she asked Velez.

  “Not as yet, though there is no doubt in my mind that both CEO Murray and Mister Carrington are actively searching for him. If your theory about who Thaddeus Rose is and what he did is correct, it’s hardly surprising he’s so difficult to find. He is possibly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, a very strong motive for wanting to stay hidden.”

  “But we still have no proof.”

  “Only circumstantial evidence. Again, that’s hardly surprising. Murray won the Nobel and his position at the head of pharmaDyne as a result of the superflu pandemic. If he was involved in the outbreak as well as the cure, he would have been very thorough in his attempts to conceal that fact. If he merely capitalized on the situation, rather than helping to cause it, he is marginally less culpable personally, but still liable as the head of pharmaDyne. That he apparently has failed to permanently silence Rose thus far continues to surprise me.”

  “It tells us a great deal about Rose, though,” Cassandra said. “And it provides a very strong motive for Carrington to want to find him.”

  “To what end?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Velez cleared her throat before saying, “I find it hard to believe that a man like Carrington is unaware of the repercussions that would come from the fall of dataDyne. From what little I know of the man, he’s a humanist as much as an iconoclast. He surely understands that the fall of dataDyne will do infinitely more harm to the world than good.”

  “Not if he thinks a greater good will come of it.” Cassandra ran her hands through her hair, vaguely aware that the gesture had turned into an unconscious habit. “If he can find absolute proof that Rose was responsible for the pandemic, he could utterly destroy pharmaDyne, and the blowback would certainly cripple the rest of the corporation. Then again, he may want Rose for questioning, for research purposes, to learn how he did it. Carrington is like me, at least in that. He always wants to know more, to know why. It’s even possible there’s another reason, one we haven’t thought of.”

  Velez considered, then reached inside her coat to the opposite side from where she wore her pistol, her hand coming out again with an older model lifeCard between her fingers. The card chimed, a minor chord, as she activated it.

  “What?” Cassandra asked.

  “Paul Sexton is mobilizing R-C/Bowman forces for an operation in the South Pacific,” Velez said, getting to her feet. She indicated Cassandra’s laptop. “May I?”

  Cassandra crossed back to her desk. “You better let me, it might bite you.”

  “Figuratively?”

  “If I could figure out a way for it to do it literally, I’d implement it.”

  Velez actually laughed, then offered the lifeCard to Cassandra, saying, “Decrypt and transfer, Easton-file.”

  The lifeCard hummed in Cassandra’s hand, chiming again, and the progress bar for the transfer appeared on the screen, filling rapidly.

  “What is Easton?” Cassandra asked, taking her seat once more.

  “Not what, who,” Velez said. She’d moved to stand behind her, watching the monitor from over Cassandra’s shoulder. “Trent Easton, he’s at the NSA.”

  “You have a connection at the NSA?”

  “Amongst other places.”

  “And you’re using that connection for dataDyne business?” The lifeCard sang once more, the transfer completed, and Cassandra handed the PDA back without looking.

  “You disapprove?”

  Cassandra thought about it, but for less than a second. Maybe it was the sting of Carrington’s betrayal still burning inside, but the obvious conflict-of-interest questions that dealing with NSA raised suddenly seemed unimportant.

  Business is business, Cassandra thought.

  “No,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Doctor. If y
ou’ll direct your attention to the surveillance file, and the attached analysis. Mister Easton was kind enough to include copies of the relevant intercepts, as well, with decryption.”

  Cassandra worked her laptop, opening the indicated files. A flood of high-resolution satellite surveillance photos cascaded open, one atop the other. The shots were all labeled, presumably for her benefit, and showed New Georgia Island in the Solomons, and more specifically, a secured compound of nearly twenty buildings situated outside the city of Hovoro. Each image was exceptional in its detail and clarity, in some cases the focus so tight and close that Cassandra could make out not only terrain features, but individuals as well. In one of the pictures, she could even make out—without any difficulty whatsoever—a remarkably overweight man sunbathing on one of the building rooftops.

  From the images themselves, even without looking at the attached analysis, Cassandra could determine a number of things. First, the compound was a Core-Mantis operation from top to bottom; their corporate logo was visible in nearly every shot, gracing the helipads, the buildings, and almost every vehicle. Second, the compound was exceptionally secure, judging from the array of checkpoints and watchtowers in the images. Ringing the facility was a doublewalled perimeter fence, the first quite possibly electrified, the second topped with razor wire.

  The enhanced level of security was certainly odd, but not entirely suspect. She had a clear memory of reading about the Core-Mantis takeover of Guadalcanal the previous summer, some heavily sanitized news story about how the company had entered into an agreement with the Solomon Island Group for land and cooperative resource management. At the time, Cassandra had assumed that meant Core-Mantis was looking to shore up its manufacturing base by securing itself a below-cost—read: free—workforce, in the form of the local populace.

  But what she was looking at now in these satellite photos wasn’t a manufacturing facility, or if it was, it was unlike any she had ever seen before. There were no manufacturing plants, no production facilities. Just a series of offices, dormitories, and a cluster of very anonymous-looking Core-Mantis buildings.

  “It’s a research facility,” Cassandra said.

  Velez sounded impressed. “That was my assessment, as well. It also agrees with Easton’s, for the record. According to him, this is Core-Mantis’s prime medical research facility, their answer to the market threat posed by pharmaDyne, or at least, their attempt to answer that threat.”

  Cassandra turned from the monitor long enough to catch Velez’s eyes. “Medical?”

  “According to the NSA, yes.”

  “But you said Sexton was making a move, not Murray.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Is there a mistake?”

  “No.” Velez indicated the screen. “Bring up the images that were taken this morning, Doctor.”

  She turned her attention back to the laptop, did as Velez had requested. A second series of satellite images, as pristine and detailed as the first, unfolded on the screen one after the other. At first blush, they were practically identical to the previous photographs, and Cassandra scanned them quickly, clicking from one to the next.

  Then she stopped, and went back, slower.

  “Is that an anti-air platform?” she asked.

  Again, Velez sounded mildly impressed. “The CM-656 anti-aircraft missile battery, called the Black Widow. It’s a short-range defensive platform, Doctor, used to defend ground targets from airborne assault, and capable of tracking a stealth aircraft. As of this morning, there were four of them in place around the facility. There’s more, if you want to see it.”

  “I’m not certain I need to,” Cassandra said softly.

  “The traffic intercepts shed some light—”

  Cassandra put a finger to her lips abruptly, cutting Velez off with the gesture. She closed her eyes, feeling the tug-of-war in her mind, the pieces of the puzzle turning, trying to mesh with one another.

  It didn’t take long.

  “He’s there,” she said, opening her eyes again and turning her chair to face Velez. “That’s the only explanation, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a theory I had considered,” Velez said slowly. “But there’s no evidence to support it.”

  “No, Rose is there, he must be. There’s no other explanation for Murray’s involvement.”

  “Paul Sexton is moving to attack the facility, not Doctor Murray. That’s been confirmed by both my people inside R-C/Bowman and by Easton at the NSA.”

  “But it’s a medical facility.”

  “Yes, so it appears.”

  “And as of this morning, Core-Mantis knows an attack is coming.”

  “Again, yes.”

  “Then the only question is who told them,” Cassandra said. “Whether it was Carrington or Murray.”

  “I fail to see Murray’s involvement in this.”

  “Stop looking for evidence and look at who stands to gain.” Cassandra found herself running her hands through her hair again, tugging at it. “It must be Murray behind this, it makes no sense otherwise. Why else would Paul Sexton suddenly initiate a hostile takeover against a Core-Mantis facility that has absolutely no impact or bearing on R-C/ Bowman?”

  “Flexing his muscles,” Velez said. “He’s showing off for the Board.”

  “But the bid’s going to fail. I don’t know much about military tactics, but I know enough. Sexton has lost the element of surprise. Core-Mantis knows he’s coming. And while a successful takeover bid would raise Sexton’s standing before the Board, a failed one will utterly destroy him. He’ll lose not only his shot at CEO, but his position at R-C/Bowman.”

  “Sexton has always been overly ambitious, Doctor.”

  Cassandra shook her head, growing at once more certain that she was right, and more frustrated that Velez didn’t see it. “No, no, Murray must have convinced Sexton to do it somehow. Must have promised him something in exchange, something Sexton wanted, something Sexton believed. Support for him as the next CEO, most likely. A promise to withdraw his own name from consideration.”

  “I’ve heard nothing about communication between Sexton and Murray,” Velez said tightly.

  “You also didn’t know that I’d been sleeping with Daniel Carrington for almost a year.”

  The statement made Velez wince.

  Cassandra pressed. “It makes far more sense if it’s Murray who tipped off Core-Mantis, not Carrington. Murray’s using Sexton, and he’s doing it brilliantly. When the takeover bid fails—and it will fail—Sexton will not only be out of the running for CEO, he’ll be out of his job at R-C/Bowman. Murray will have removed his strongest competition.”

  Velez squinted past her shoulder, at the laptop screen. “And if Rose is there …”

  “Then Sexton has provided Murray with the distraction he needs to get into a very secure facility to find Rose.”

  “At which point, he’ll kill him.”

  “Yes.”

  Both of them fell silent.

  “Carrington is no fool,” Cassandra said, after almost a minute’s further thought. “I’d bet you anything that he already knows about all of this, about Murray using Sexton, about the impending attack. He knows Rose is there.”

  “You think he’ll send in his own people?”

  “I would.”

  “It’s going to be a madhouse on the ground in Hovoro, Doctor. NSA estimates put Core-Mantis troop strength at over five hundred. My own sources tell me that Sexton is mobilizing his full R-C/Bowman complement for the takeover, that’s at least two hundred and fifty soldiers, with close air support. Add to that whoever Murray sends, and you believe that Daniel Carrington will send his own team in on top of that?”

  She didn’t even hesitate before answering. “Absolutely.”

  “It’s a suicide mission.”

  “That hardly matters. If there’s a possibility that Carrington can get his hands on Rose, he’ll take it. And if there’s the slightest chance he’ll succeed, we have to stop him.”

/>   “And how do you propose doing that?”

  Cassandra frowned, again finding her hands running through her hair. She tried to remember how much money she was worth at the moment, and how much of it was liquid. At least thirty million pounds, she guessed, and that was just what she could get her hands on at the moment. With a couple of phone calls, she could quadruple that amount within a day.

  But it will be money well spent, she thought.

  “We’re going to send in troops of our own,” Cassandra DeVries said.

  CHAPTER 26

  Carrington Institute VTOL Chameleon Class Dropship #003—4,750 Feet, level Flight-South Pacific, Solomon Islands Group October 13th/ 14th International Date Line), 2020

  Calvin Rogers’s voice came over the headphones, his voice thin with excitement.

  “Three minutes.”

  Steinberg murmured a confirmation, hoping to God that his stomach would settle. Seated on the bench opposite him in the dropship troop compartment, Joanna Dark echoed the confirmation, and over his headset, Steinberg thought the damned girl sounded almost disinterested.

  As if making a night drop into a free-fire zone is something she does all the time, Steinberg thought, and he knew it was bitter, but he couldn’t help it, and truth to tell, he didn’t care. She had no right to be here. She had no right to be here at all.

  It didn’t matter that she had never made a parachute drop before in her life. It didn’t matter that she had utterly screwed the pooch on the group tactics simulation. It didn’t matter that she was a twenty-year-old girl, for Christ’s sake.

  Joanna Dark was going to drop into the heart of an open war between Core-Mantis OmniGlobal and Royce-Chamberlain /Bowman Motors not ninety miles from where the United States Marines had fought one of the bloodiest battles against the Japanese during the Second World War. None of it mattered, not one bit of it.

  No, Agent Dark—Acting Agent Dark, he corrected himself—was making the jump tonight with him, and together they would attempt to locate, capture, and then lift Doctor Thaddeus Rose, who might—emphasis on might, since there was not one concrete shred of proof that Rose was even at the Hovoro Facility—be somewhere at the site. Joanna was his backup, instead of any of a half dozen or so other commandos that Steinberg himself had trained, that Steinberg trusted with his life. Instead he had Joanna Dark, who had no combat discipline, no perspective, no experience at this kind of thing.