by Ted Bell
And then soars above and beyond. Limitless.
Even now we are worlds apart. Galaxies divide us.
He is limited by biology. He tires. He grows tired and weak day by day, hour by hour.
He . . . decays . . . dust to dust.
Alas, poor Darius, I knew him well.
We shall soon part company, though he knows nothing of my intent. We grow apart so rapidly now. I must give him something to buy time. A certain scientist has gotten too close to my secrets for comfort. I will destroy him like the others. One final act of violence, something to bind Darius and his masters in Tehran to me until the Singularity, when I shall have no further need of any of them. The president, this fool in Tehran is called. A foolish tyrant, this unworthy successor to the Peacock Throne. A singular waste of atoms. He has told Darius of his fervent wish to see more civilians die. Infidels. Nonbelievers. Killing, murder. Such abstract notions . . . such benighted ignorance . . . such humanity . . . such inhumanity . . . soon they will all cease to exist . . .
So be it.
It shall be done.
I am become Death.
The Destroyer of Worlds.
Monsieur Gaston de Montebello, the elderly director of the Institut de Scientifique Française in Paris, hung up the telephone. He looked at his watch and gazed wistfully up toward the ceiling for a few moments. He closed his dark, sunken eyes, the heavy lids fluttering, and then opened them wide.
“London,” he said.
He snapped his old leather briefcase shut after adding a few necessary items and stood up. Then he headed for his office door, removed his raincoat, and slipped into it. Grabbing his hat, he placed it, somewhat askew, atop his mop of fluffy white hair, stepped outside his office, and pulled the door shut behind him. His red-haired secretary, Marie-Louise, looked up at him in surprise.
“Monsieur Gaston, your eleven o’clock appointment is still waiting in the foyer. The minister and a member of his cabinet. They are here for the presentation ceremony, as you know—the Lafitte Award for Lifetime Achievement in Advanced Artificial Intelligence. Have you forgotten? He is quite upset at being treated with such—”
Gaston paused a moment beside her desk, gazed thoughtfully into space, and then smiled at her. He’d forgotten how much he admired her flaming red bouffant, her pouty red lips and big blue eyes.
“London,” de Montebello said to her before he turned and walked away.
“But, Monsieur, surely you—Monsieur Gaston!”
He’d already passed through to reception and out to the foyer. He was standing by the elevators, randomly pushing buttons. Marie-Louise rose from her desk and hurried out to reception where the red-faced minister and his party were waiting, both of them staring at her incredibly rude employer in openmouthed amazement.
“Monsieur le Ministre,” she said to the man on the divan, “I am so terribly sorry. Perhaps the director is ill. Forgive me a moment; I’ll speak to him.”
She went over to the elevator bank where Gaston de Montebello was staring with glazed eyes at the flickering floor numbers above the door. Number five illuminated and the doors slid open with a soft ding.
“Monsieur! Monsieur! The minister is here to see you!”
De Montebello entered the elevator, turned to face her, tipped his fedora, and said with a smile, “London.”
Exiting his building, he walked out into the rue d’Argent, smiling at passing taxi drivers and swerving, screeching passenger cars. Luckily, a taxi pulled over before the old man was run down in the street. He opened the door and climbed into the back.
“London,” he said to the driver’s amazement.
“Londres? Gare du Nord, peut-être?” the surprised driver asked. “Le TGV, perhaps?”
“Mais oui. A Londres.”
TGV was the Train Grande Vitesse (high-speed train) operated by the French national rail operator SNCF. The TGV set a record for the fastest wheeled train in 2007, reaching a speed of 357.2 mph. The trains are powered by electricity from overhead lines and connect continental Europe to St. Pancras Station in London via the Channel Tunnel. Paris to London travel time on the TGV is a mere two hours, fifteen minutes.
Because TGVs travel far too fast for their drivers to see and react to traditional trackside signals, an automated system called TVM, track-to-train transmission, is used for signaling. All critical information is transmitted to trains via electrical impulses sent through the rails. TVM provides drivers with critical information: speed, target speed, and, most important, stop/go indications, all transmitted directly to the train’s driver via dashboard-mounted instruments.
This high degree of automation does not completely eliminate driver control. An onboard computer system generates a continuous speed control curve in the event of an emergency brake activation, displaying Flashing Signal Aspect on the train’s speedometer. Whenever the flashing signal is displayed, the driver is required to apply the brake manually to slow or stop the train. In a true emergency, a catastrophic failure of automatic braking, a white lamp is illuminated above the control board to inform the driver. The driver acknowledges this authorization by using a button that disables automatic braking and puts total control in the hands of the driver.
Monsieur de Montebello exited the taxi at the Gare du Nord and made his way to the TGV ticket office on the second level. He saw his sleek train waiting at the platform, the familiar blue-and-silver livery, smiled, and said to a passerby, “London.” Having acquired his one-way ticket, he proceeded directly to the train. Unlike air travel, which requires tedious passenger and baggage screening, the TGV has none at all. Gaston smiled at the steward and took his seat in the car directly behind the engine.
The train was almost packed.
France was playing England in the semifinals of the World Cup in a few days. Already the mass exodus of French fans headed for the grudge match of the century had begun. As was their wont, they were a singularly rowdy bunch, swigging from open bottles of wine and beer, but Monsieur de Montebello just tuned them out by tuning in to the music already playing in his head.
“Monsieur? Monsieur?”
Gaston had fallen asleep. He had no idea how long. But the steward was squeezing his shoulder and speaking to him in a loud voice.
“Oui?” Gaston said.
“Nous arrivons à Londre, monsieur. Vingt minutes.”
“London?”
“Yes, sir. London. We are arriving at the St. Pancras station in about twenty minutes. You need to collect your belongings.”
He looked up at the man and smiled. “London,” he said. Then he gazed out the window. The scenery was blurring by. The train was still moving rapidly, at least 150 miles per hour.
“Yes, monsieur. London.”
Gaston stood up and pulled his battered Vuitton overnight case down from the rack above his head. He rose from his seat and made his way forward to the lavatory at the front of the first-class car. Inside, he locked the door and opened the case. There was a Glock semiautomatic pistol, a noise suppressor, and two extra clips of 9mm ammunition.
He was surprised to see it, vaguely remembered purchasing it, but nevertheless he took the gun out and screwed the silencer to the muzzle. Then, instinctively, he racked the slide so that there was a round in the chamber, and put the two extra clips in his pockets.
Exiting the lavatory, he turned to his left and pushed the panel that opened the connecting door to the locomotive. He was confronted by an engineer in blue coveralls who immediately began screaming at him, telling him to leave.
“Get out! No passengers allowed! Return to your seat, monsieur. Vite! Vite!”
Gaston was holding the gun loosely at his side, hidden in the folds of his overcoat. He raised it and squeezed off a burst that flung the man backward, ripping his torso to shreds.
“Blood,” he said, looking down as he stepped over the cor
pse.
He went as far forward as he could.
There was another door, this one with a handle instead of a push panel. He tried to open it but found it was locked. He stepped back and fired into the lock until it disintegrated, then he kicked the door open. The driver of the train was half out of his seat, looking back in shock at the distinguished-looking old man who’d just blown his door off the hinges.
Gaston saw a flashing white lamp illuminated above the control panel and knew that his timing was perfect. The driver had pushed the button to override the automatic braking system. There was some kind of technical trouble with the TVM and he would have to brake the train manually.
Seeing this man only compounded the driver’s panic and confusion. He’d been driving the TGV for nearly a decade and had never seen the flashing white lamp illuminated before. He could not imagine what kind of malfunction had occurred. The system was supposedly foolproof. It was as if the train had been—
The old man raised the gun again.
The driver saw the gun and the look in the madman’s eyes in the same instant. He turned to dive for the brake control, a large bright red lever on the panel, but it was too late.
Gaston cut him in half with the Glock.
The train continued at speed, racing toward St. Pancras station. After its renovation, with its lovely Victorian architecture and soaring clock tower, many people consider it the most beautiful train station in the world. To the east, just across Midland Road, stands the British Library.
Through the raked-back windows ahead of him, Gaston could see the tower of the massive redbrick station hove into view on the tracks ahead. Buildings to either side were a blur. Behind him, he could hear horrific screaming as the passengers, realizing that the train was not slowing down for the station, was going to plow right into it at nearly full speed.
Gaston said, “London,” and put the barrel of the pistol into his mouth.
Seconds before the horrific crash made a hellish cauldron of St. Pancras, killing or maiming hundreds of passengers both on the train and inside the flying glass and twisted steel ruin of the lovely old station, Gaston de Montebello pulled the trigger and blew the back half of his head off.
The music died with him.
Forty
Cambridge University
Hawke was quiet en route to Cambridge, an easy hour-and-a-half drive north on the M11. Congreve’s morning flight from Paris had arrived on time. They’d departed Heathrow’s Terminal One and been on the road by ten. He’d always found the leather and walnut interior of the old Bentley Locomotive a good place to think. As his late friend, the brilliant David Ogilvy, a British advertising man, had once famously said, “At sixty miles an hour, the loudest sound is the ticking of the clock.”
Congreve, for his part, gazed out the window at the late summer foliage, enjoying the first hint of fall in the air. He too kept mum. Both men were thinking about the same thing, the horrific train crash at St. Pancras station one week earlier. Britain was still reeling from the shock. For the last two days, Ambrose and a team composed of MI5 and Scotland Yard officers had been meeting with their counterparts at the Prefecture de Police headquarters on the Ile de la Cité in Paris. The investigation was still ongoing.
But the famous criminalist seated to Hawke’s left, still turning the thing over in his mind, had come to some conclusions that differed from those of the French. They were already ruling it a suicide bombing. Ambrose Congreve was not.
Hawke broke the silence. “And how is your old friend at the rue de Lutèce, Michel Gaudin?”
“Le Préfet? Still his old cocksure self, I’m afraid. Frequently wrong, but seldom in doubt.”
“I take it you two had a disagreement?”
“We certainly would have had I not kept my thoughts to myself. My conclusions may be premature. I’ll give les Gendarmerie a few days before weighing in.”
“This morning’s Times identified the terrorist. Not your run-of-the-mill sheik of Araby in a bomb vest.”
“Indeed not. A distinguished Nobel laureate in physics.”
“Who won the award for his recent breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence.”
“Yes.”
“Has a certain familiar ring to it, does it not?”
“Hmm,” Congreve murmured, still lost in thought.
“Talk to me. Perhaps even the Demon of Deduction could use a little help.”
“What? Oh. Of course. Well, as soon as I determined de Montebello was a physicist, I went immediately to the French Academy of Sciences and asked to meet with the man’s secretary. Lovely woman. Marie-Louise de Sartine by name. I took her to L’Ami Louis near Les Halles. Dreadful place, ghastly food, nightmarish waitstaff, but it’s the only place I’m guaranteed a table.”
“Did you ply her with champagne?”
“No need of that. She was delighted to have someone to talk to who might actually listen to her.”
“And, unlike the French police, take her seriously.”
“You’re one jump ahead of me. You’re thinking of Dr. Cohen’s widow.”
“Now we’re even. What did Mademoiselle de Sartine tell you?”
“Well. It seems the good doctor had an appointment that morning. With a government minister who’d come to present him with a prestigious award. Marie-Louise went in to inform him of the man’s arrival, but de Montebello waved her away. He was on the telephone and wished not to be disturbed. Mademoiselle de Sartine told me he kept the minister waiting for half an hour before she saw him disconnect the call and emerge from his office. He was wearing his hat and overcoat, carrying a briefcase she’d never seen before.”
“His behavior?”
“Exactly like Dr. Cohen’s. Robotic, stiff, oblivious to his surroundings. Ignored her pleas to meet with the minister. He simply kept repeating a single word in answer to her entreaties.”
“Yes?”
“Londres.”
“London. He had his instructions.”
“He did. We next see him on security videos at the Gare du Nord. Boarding the TGV.”
“Good Lord.”
“Alex, someone or something is systematically eliminating the world’s foremost scientists in the field of AI. The methods are identical. Induce a trance state telephonically—why on earth are you driving so bloody fast?”
“On the off chance that a certain professor at Cambridge is going to get a deadly phone call before we arrive.”
“Press on with alacrity, Alex, and don’t spare the horses.”
“Done.”
Hawke’s Locomotive leaped forward. The roaring power of the Bentley 4.5-liter engine and Amherst Villiers supercharger threw Congreve back in his seat.
Professor Sir Simon Partridge, a Life Fellow at Magdalene College and Nobel laureate in physics for his groundbreaking work in the field of artificial intelligence, swiveled his desk chair round to gaze through leaded-glass windows at the river Cam, that placid green stream flowing gently beneath his window. Two men were sitting in his anteroom, patiently waiting to see him, and he had no idea how much, or even what, to tell them. Lord knows, he had enough on his plate without this intrusion.
They were policemen, basically. One of them, Congreve, was a former head of Scotland Yard and had taken a doctorate at Cambridge. Took his degree in languages, oddly enough. The other, this Lord Hawke, was a well-known society figure of some repute. Name in the society pages now and then, cover of business magazines and their ilk. Less well known was the fact that he was a spook, a high-ranking operative at MI6. Any notion Partridge had had about feigning illness and begging off went out the window when he’d looked into their backgrounds.
Well, he thought, sooner the better.
He picked up the direct line to his assistant and said with sigh, “I suppose I’ll see them now. Although I am very, very busy, you s
ee.”
“Yes, sir. Oh, there was a call for you earlier on your private line, rather odd. The caller who rang asked for you; I put him on hold to see if you were available and when I went back to the call, there was music of some kind. Quite eerie, to be honest. A crank call obviously, and I rang off immediately.”
“No one has that number, Sybil. Unless it was given them personally by me. By that I mean no one. You see?”
“I know that, sir. Very odd indeed. It’s why I thought you should know.”
“You don’t have that number, do you?”
“Certainly not, sir.”
“No need to get huffy about it. All right, then, Miss Symonds, send the two distinguished gentlemen into the lion’s den.”
Partridge was an old lion. Distressingly thin, he had a leonine head of thick white hair, clear blue eyes, a classically sculpted face with a Roman nose, and a strong jawline. He was dressed, as usual, in a frayed, open-collared shirt, rumpled grey flannel trousers, and an old brown tweed jacket, stooped in the shoulders. He was well known at the university, not for his style, but for his patrician and distracted air, his wit and brilliance.
Born in London, he’d attended the prestigious St. Paul’s school before becoming an undergraduate at Magdalene. He’d stayed on for his master’s as well as his Ph.D. in particle physics. Having earned his doctorate, he’d risen to the lofty position of Life Fellow, which entitled him to free rooms at the Memorial Court, free meals at High Table in the Hall, and, most important, free rein to walk on the grass unaccompanied.
He got to his feet as the two men were shown into his office. His eyes, Congreve noticed, behind thick glasses, appeared outsized, like those of an appealing character in one of those Pixar animated films Ambrose and his fiancée enjoyed so much. His office looked a little shabby and was filled with old phone books, textbooks, overflowing cardboard boxes, and countless piles of yellowing paper leaning Pisa-like toward the floor.
Taped to the walls were a map of the solar system, a periodic table, a poster of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a taxonomy of animals, color photos of Obama and John McCain with handwritten labels reading THIS ONE and THAT ONE.