Rose interjected. “Yes, I’m certain that’s correct, Pernetta.” Rose turned again to Cardenas. “And lastly, do you have anything new on Halberstom, Benny?”
“Nothing at this time, unfortunately. No new evidence. I should mention that we know that Halberstom’s body was not dumped into the bay from the Empress, since the Empress has been docked for over three months now. This being said, we continue to make inquiries with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Coast Guard, as well as with the marinas in the area where boats could get access to the Hudson Bay. No luck so far, but we continue to search. There are a lot of boats out there, especially if you add in Long Island, New Jersey, and Staten Island. There are a ton of boats and a lot of places to search.”
A few moments of silence passed again before Cardenas said, “John, can you speak regarding our recruit Jillian Frank’s been working with? Jillian mentioned that she may have lost contact with her.”
“I can say that there’s been an incident with Lyn Lee. This situation is being managed by myself and Lorren, and I’m afraid I can’t release any more information at this time. If any of you are contacted by Lyn Lee, please direct her to contact Jillian Frank.”
Rose was intent on making it clear from his tone that he didn’t wish to answer any further questions about Lee. A handful of beats later, the room had remained silent, so he continued. “I’m sure you’ve all realized by now that the Empress is being prioritized. At the moment, we have a lot of eyes and ears trained upon the vessel in efforts to monitor the activity within the ship. This includes one of our own sniper teams with placements both atop some of the buildings in the complex next to the pier, as well as on some of the elevated commercial buildings along the shoreline. We’ve also got sensors placed both underwater and along the shoreline with the intent of picking up any stray audio or video signals. To this point, however, there’s been virtually no activity, certainly nothing we’ve gleaned any actionable intel from.
“For this reason, we’re pressing to figure out how to get inside the ship. We’ve looked at a number of options, but the best way at this time appears to be via USA Ports Management. We’re working with USA Ports to try and get some intelligence from inside the vessel from their employees as they’re allowed inside.”
A younger male agent sitting on a folding chair in the corner of the room said, “What intel do we have on the boat?”
Rose searched a bit through some papers in a file he’d placed in front of him. “We’ve managed to scrape together a little of the boat’s history.” He slid a page from the folder and read from it as he spoke. “It was built by Dreyer’s Shipbuilders in Holland in 1968 for an English company by the name of U.K. General Ltd., which is a conglomerate based in the United Kingdom that manufactures electronics goods. U.K. General owned it and had it registered in the U.K. until it was purchased by China Equity Ltd in 1998. Since then, it’s been registered in China, in Shanghai.”
Rose looked briefly away from the page. “I’m not an expert on sea vessels, but I can relate some of the info on the boat. As far as the type of vessel, it’s considered an ocean liner and, as such, is one of the few remaining ocean liners still in operation. I won’t get into the design of the boat too much except to say that its length is about 325 meters, its width at its widest point is 132 meters, and it displaces about 70,500 tons. It’s got a total of sixteen decks. The point being, is that it’s a very big ship—meant to haul a large number of passengers across the ocean. However, it can, of course, also be retrofitted for means other than just transportation of private passengers. We believe that’s what China Equity has done.”
Mathiason spoke up for the first time. “Why don’t we use some of that stealth technology developed by Brooklyn Capital—the cloaking technology?”
“Lorren has inquired about its use with Charlie Monroe, but it’s not technology that has been perfected to an extent where it can render complete invisibility from a distance of only a few feet. At close quarters, there is still enough diffraction in the light to where large objects, particularly objects with a lot of non-linear lines such as humans, cannot be completely hidden. Monroe explained that it would hide the actual person, but there are still far too many imperfections in the projected background and around the edges to allow for total invisibility. The technology is remarkable, and it did meet the specs that the military wanted and had outlined in the contract, but it’s not perfect.”
Another male agent in the corner of the room spoke up. “John, regarding the Empress, why not just raid it? We may find all three of the remaining abductees alive.”
“Lorren and I have debated this and we’ve decided that we just can’t do it yet. For one thing, we don’t have enough evidence related to any crime that would allow a proper warrant. Secondly, we have no indications that any of our abductees are at that location. I’ll reiterate what Benny said regarding Halberstom: the Empress has been moored for over three months, so it couldn’t have been used to transport Halberstom. Don’t forget, also, that there were indications in some of the transmissions coming from Dr. Xiang’s apartment that the abductees are being moved around from location to location. And thirdly, there could be no small amount of political fallout from an unannounced intrusion onto a Chinese vessel. We’re all aware that the Chinese government may be complicit in these abductions and murders, but it’s best we hold off until we can support such an assertion. Or, rather, until we can support an assertion without giving away our established leads. Keep in mind that, with respect to the audio and video we’re getting from the Empress, we’re getting a very large amount of valuable intel, albeit most of this intel seems to be related to activity outside the scope of these abductions.”
Rose answered a few more general questions, but no one had any new information, so Rose excused them.
Chapter 30
Brooklyn, New York
Friday, February 28, 7:29 a.m. EST
Lee, sitting Indian style on the floor of the den, took a sip of water from a thermos and checked the clock on her laptop, which read 7:29 a.m. The glowing numbers contrasted against the darkness of the room, lightened a bit by a trace of morning light entering through the circular window above the telescope. She took another sip from the thermos and, as soon as the clock changed to 7:30, she pulled Okoye’s HUD down over her head. Her vision exploded, once again, into a panorama of colored light as she stood as Okoye’s digital alter ego in the Grand Cathedral.
Lee proceeded among the throngs along the main corridor. Upon reaching the fountain, she made a right turn, trailing behind a Roman soldier dressed in full battle regalia, including tunic, helmet, sword, shield, and armor plates that, in its time, had been made of iron. She followed the corridor to the end, as she’d done the few weeks prior, and entered the spherical room constructed of beige stone with the small reflecting pool. Leaning over the pool, a likeness of Okoye dressed in a suit and tie appeared in the dark water. The image had a three-dimensional quality to it, and Lee wondered how he’d pulled that off. Her curiosity satiated, she moved toward the opening in the stone and it allowed her to slip through into the subterranean stairwell on the opposite side.
She descended the stone stairs, instinctively avoiding the stalactites even though she knew they couldn’t do any real physical harm. The stairwell darkened as she descended, the color of the stone changing from beige to dark gray. When she reached the landing at the bottom, she followed the stone pathway as it turned sharply to the left, eventually widening so that clusters of stalagmites, damp with moss, protruded up on her left and right and stalactites bore down at her from above like fangs. The effect was such that she felt as though she was climbing into the bowels of a great sea serpent.
As had happened when she’d been led down here by Xiang, the tunnel became lighter the further along she went. Eventually, the tunnel cleared into the cavern with the light streaming in from above and the green tinge of the interior light from the emerald deposits. At this time, the caver
n was empty. She crossed over the dank water via the same aged bridge where she’d earlier confronted Confucius, but proceeded on across and onto the flat stone floor where she’d seen Xiang and Confucius’s avatar engage in an encrypted conversation.
Her attention shifted to a light source overhead, and she winced as the light momentarily blinded her. She blinked a few times to relieve her eyes before taking a few moments to scan the entirety of the cavern. It appeared the same as it had the prior occasion with the exception of a narrow stone walkway winding through patches of stalagmites at the front of the cavern. She ventured along the walkway, following along the winding path to a small exit on the opposite side of the cavern. This is where Xiang’s avatar had disappeared from those few weeks prior. She slipped through the door and found herself in another small, featureless room, which she speculated was an alternate gateway into and out of the cavern.
Lee followed the winding path back to the main part of the cavern. As she traversed a gentle rise and stepped onto the main landing, a play of light exposed a peculiar outcropping on the cavern wall. As she approached, she began to get a better feel for the depth of the rock formations. As she maneuvered her way closer, she could begin to see the makings of a fissure. It was hard to see as the grays and browns of the stone played tricks with her eyes, but the further she got, the more it opened up to her. She passed through a series of narrow folds in the rock, which rose on both sides and high above, until she found herself standing precariously on a ledge above a majestic alpine expanse at dusk. A valley stretched across her vision far below her, illuminated by the purple-and-red light of a setting sun.
One thing the engineers of the HUD had accomplished was that there was no sudden cutoff in the user experience along her peripheral vision, which allowed for better tracking of her digital body. As such, the immersive quality was more accurate by an order of magnitude as compared with any commercially available virtual reality experience. This created a very precarious sensation for Lee as she stood on the ledge. She observed rather than felt a sharp wind bristling across Okoye’s body.
She discovered a narrow set of stairs carved into the face of the cliff, rising sharply to her right. She began ascending them, studying the vista below her as she went. Down below in the valley, there appeared a series of wooden pagodas and other structures gathered within a cluster of pines around a narrow stream. She was too elevated to make out much of the detail in the buildings, but she could see flickering bursts of white where tiny waterfalls were interspersed along the stream as it wound its way down to lower elevations. She saw also a group of small Nangchen horses galloping along an expansive area of rock and scrub. She focused momentarily on the spectacular sunset, a concentration broken only by the squawk of a group of sparrowhawks as they soared high over the valley floor.
As she ascended the stairs, she began to notice the setting of the sun was expedited. Furthermore, she found that the stairs led her into a dragon’s head that was carved into the stone of the cliff. The dragon had its mouth open, the stairs leading into its mouth. As she ascended, she fought the urge to look down as it made her stomach churn and cast her off-balance, though she knew it wasn’t real. At the top of the stairs, she entered the dragon’s head, which was nothing more than a featureless cove. She exited through a small door on the opposite side and found herself walking on flat ground along a narrow pathway through a row of hedges. The hedges were tall, stretching upward a few feet above Okoye’s head. Through the hedges, she could see the darkening sky, which had turned deep purple.
Ahead of her, the hedges were coming to an end. A few moments later, she found herself in an ancient Chinese courtyard. As she continued along a pebbled walkway, she encountered a series of cylindrical stone pillars with Chinese writing on them. She stopped to read the writing and was startled by the appearance of two monks—one in a white robe, the other in burgundy—making their way along the perimeter of the courtyard, along the inside of the hedge line. Lee held her breath as the monks passed by, but they did not seem to notice her, nor even acknowledge her presence. She breathed a sigh of relief after they’d passed her by and promptly began studying the inscriptions on the pillars. She was far from an expert, but her interpretation was that of a Buddhist prayer or incantation.
Since emerging from beneath the hedges, the sky had opened up to her. For the first time, she noticed how beautifully the nightscape was rendered by the designers of this secluded portion of the portal. The sun had fully set, and there were bright pinpricks of light scattered about the inky blackness in addition to portions of purple and blue gases, which appeared to stretch out into the heavens, forming celestial shapes. The layered way in which the stars were positioned in relation to themselves and to some prodigious gaseous structures overwhelmed her sense of depth perception and made her lightheaded. Off to her right, an icy blue meteor burned its way across the sky, its dust tail trailing behind. The moon hung pale and bright, low in the sky to her left.
As she progressed into the interior of the courtyard, she encountered a group of stone markers. She was certain they were graves, though there were no markings on them. She continued until she approached a sentinel of pine trees arranged in a circle. Within the pines was a set of brick stairs comprised of three steps and arranged concentrically around the perimeter of a bowl-shaped depression. The bottom of the depression was flat and made of smooth burgundy and cream marble. In the middle was a circular fountain made of gray stone with a sculpture of a meditative Buddha in the center. Two more robed monks were standing next to the fountain, engaged in a private conversation, as Greek and Persian symbols danced in the dialogue boxes over their heads. Lee stepped into the bowl-shaped depression to see if the monks would respond, but this produced no reaction from them. She proceeded to the other side of the fountain, back up the three steps, and continued into the interior of the courtyard along a continuation of the stone pathway she’d been on previously.
She walked for a while longer along the pathway, through a small forest of birch and pine trees, before clearing onto an expansive terrace of red and brown brick. On the other side was a barricade made of gnarled oak. On the opposite side of the barricade, the ground fell away steeply and there was nothing but an expanse of alpine scenery, a continuation of the views she’d been treated to as she’d ascended the stone stairs leading her into the dragon’s head.
She was alone here, except for a figure off in the distance to her left. She began walking slowly on the terrace near the barricade, admiring the view below. Beyond the barricade, there was a precipitous drop-off in elevation. If this setting were real and her flesh and blood self were to leap over the barricade, she’d fall hundreds of feet before striking the rocky terrain. As when she’d been on that narrow stone stairway, she found herself becoming dizzy and disorientated whenever she looked down into the valley.
As she walked, the figure grew larger in her field of vision and became more detailed. He was wearing a long red, burgundy, and brown-colored robe and he had a long black mustache and beard that hung down to below his jawline. As she drew closer, she realized that this avatar was that of Confucius, the same one she’d seen those few days earlier in the cavern engaging in the encrypted conversation with Xiang. She prompted him with the communication tool, but this time there was no response. He stood in place facing out to the view beyond, occasionally stroking his beard.
Lee frowned and admired the view again for a few moments as another comet blazed its way across the sky. This reminded her of her earlier thought about the designers of this part of the portal and how they’d been able to render such textured scenery. The comet, in turn, reminded her of the developer files and her desire to get access to them. She broke from the spell of the imagery and shifted her digital view to that of a rectangular screen she’d called up.
On her keyboard, she typed in the directory where all of the developer files for the portal were kept and ran a few queries based on key words. She eventually stumbled upon a
sub-directory—Brooklyn/Resource/Dev/Dev/China/Monastery —that seemed as promising as any. However, when she clicked on it, a password request appeared. She quietly cursed herself as she had no idea what the password might be. She’d have to inquire with Okoye as to whether he had any permissions that would enable her to unlock the files.
Lee logged out of the portal and removed the HUD. She pondered whether the FBI—Frank and Reardon, specifically—had been able to figure out who may have been on the other end of the Confucius avatar during the conversation with Xiang. Not having access to the files she needed in order to find the answer herself, she decided to switch gears and research Susan Meng’s father and his firm, which seemed as good a place to start as any.
Chapter 31
New York City
Friday, February 28, 8:24 p.m. EST
Built on the corner of Plymouth and Adams Streets, at the northernmost tip of Brooklyn, was an irregularly shaped apartment building constructed of muddy brick within the hulking shadow of the of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was an average-sized building as apartments go, constructed in the shape of a rectangle. However, beginning on the third floor, the north-facing side cut diagonally from the northwest corner to the southeast corner, so that the top three floors took the shape of a triangle. At the northern-most intersection of the triangle was a small room. It was a room that comprised the entirety of the uppermost seventh floor and, more importantly, had a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge as it spanned the East River into Manhattan off to the west. It was a room rented by Lee’s beguiling friend Keplar Wang. Wang did not live in the room, however. For this he paid a monthly rent for one of the basement apartments in the same building along Plymouth Street.
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