by Bart Kosko
Richard had the Tabriz backup chip in his pocket.
He held in his lap the master optical tape of the Black Sun demo. Raquel kept a backup copy of the optical tape in her black fake crocodile jacket. John held the melted Tabriz chip in his left hand and held the Glock nine-millimeter in his lap with his right hand. Jism worked to get Eytan back on-line in the heads-up display on the windshield. Daniel refused to yield his manual control of the Jeep.
Daniel and Raquel had come to the warehouse and slid their ID cards through the door slot. John had brought Eytan Baum on-line to confirm their IDs and to watch as John drew the Glock and let the two agents in. Baum had ignored the pistol with a slight grin and had gone over a checklist of items for John and Richard to bring for the demo. The agent couple also had ignored the gun and helped Richard pack the demo supplies. John had refused to ride in their old green Bronco and they just nodded. John still had not heard either one speak a complete sentence.
The windshield fluttered in snow.
John tried to guess what Raquel looked like without her black jacket and with her brown hair down from its tight bun.
John. Eytan is coming on-line. He has twice ignored our request for comm synch.
Eytan appeared on the main window. The bags under his eyes had turned black from lack of sleep.
“Shalom all,” Eytan said. “John. I hope you have calmed down.”
“I’m calm. What about Denise’s cabin? Have your people been there?”
“We took care of it. The town of Wrightwood is still sleeping.”
“What did you do with Denise?” Richard said.
“We took her to a private mortuary. You can see her body when they finish.”
“Thanks.”
“And my son?” John said.
“We took him to the same mortuary.”
Eytan’s veracity has fallen below 40%. Do not believe him.
“Make sure he arrives in Nevada before the demo.”
“I don’t know if we can do that.”
“Then forget the demo.”
“Calm down. We’ll see what we can do. And Daniel. Don’t drive so fast. Stay out of the platoon lanes.”
Daniel nodded and slowed the Jeep to 60 miles per hour.
“Good. I’ll check back with you when you are in the desert.”
“Wait a minute,” John said. “Are the police looking for us?”
“You should always assume that someone is looking for you.”
The screen turned back to snow and then gave way to the clear windshield and the growing orange dawn.
Daniel moved away from the two far-left platoon lanes. Each car could join a single-lane platoon of less than 10 cars. It could become a platoon leader if it drove over 80 miles per hour and if at least two cars chose to follow it rather than pass it. John liked the high speed of the platoon lanes but did not like the extra protocols and the legal liability. Drivers in a platoon wreck tended to sue one another.
John watched the extra fees grow in red at the bottom of the windshield.
The state already counted this time as near-peak transit time even though the dense traffic came from the other direction. The westbound traffic had already slowed to a near stop. Most of the cars still had their headlights on. Much of rebuilt L.A. lay to the east of old L.A. Its people jammed its freeways from morning till night.
John felt the need to sleep and knew his eyes were as black as Eytan’s. The car passed through Far East L.A. now. He would wait to sleep until they passed Palm Springs and its suburbs and studios that housed the new film industry. Richard had already closed his eyes.
“Pull over! Now!”
It was a loud voice that came from the dashboard.
“What the hell is that?” John said.
“LAPD,” Daniel said.
A small blue ultralight aircraft flew above the Jeep.
“Pull over! Your freeway space ends in exactly 10 seconds!”
Daniel wove between cars and pulled over to the far-right shoulder just as the wheels began to lock on the smart asphalt. Momentum carried the Jeep onto the green ivy and on up the embankment. The wheels unlocked and Daniel flipped the four-wheel-drive switch to climb the rest of the steep hillside. The jerk and bumps had twice slammed John forward to the full extent of his lap and shoulder belts.
The ultralight followed the Jeep over the embankment and onto the grid of streets.
“Goddamn it!” John said. “Where are you going?”
Daniel did not answer him. He spoke in Hebrew to Raquel and into a small black personal digital assistant he pulled from his gray fake deerskin jacket. John kept the Glock in his lap but pointed it at Daniel through the seat. Richard looked at the pistol and shook his head.
The Jeep drove and turned through the mostly empty suburban streets of Diamond Bar. The blue ultralight stayed above them and still sent threats to the sensors in the plastic skin of the Jeep.
The police gained voice control for a few moments as the Jeep crossed some of the main streets. Daniel still spoke to his PDA and received messages from it that played out through the raisin in his ear. Soon two LAPD cars chased the Jeep through the streets. John could see their flashing red and blue lights. The Jeep canceled all sounds from their sirens and loudspeakers.
The police say we are under arrest and have compounded our crime by fleeing. I see no way that we can outrun or outmaneuver them. We should surrender before they open fire on us. The transit authorities have also suspended your license.
“Daniel,” John said. “Where are we going?”
“Police have roadblock ahead,” Daniel said with a strong Israeli accent.
“So where the hell are we going?”
“Roadblock.”
John soon saw the roadblock. Six LAPD cars blocked the street. The cops stood behind their cars and had their .357 Magnums drawn. One aimed a 12-gauge shotgun at the Jeep.
John turned to watch the two LAPD cars behind them when he felt the violent turn and saw the two LAPD cars off to his right side. Daniel turned sharp again and then slammed the brakes to stop. Richard’s side slammed against a parked red pickup truck.
The Jeep stopped in a soft but abrupt crunch.
Daniel turned and grabbed the Glock from John just as John recoiled from the whiplash. Daniel whipped the short barrel across John’s left temple and eye. Then Daniel grabbed the Tabriz chip from John’s left hand and tossed the Glock to Raquel. She aimed the pistol at Richard. She took his laser tape and fished through his pocket until she found the backup chip.
Then the Israelis ran from the Jeep.
John watched them through his right eye. He saw them run to a small black car and jump in and speed off.
A can of tear gas broke the window on the driver’s side.
A black cop in riot gear pulled John out to the hard cool pavement. John’s eyes watered when he opened them and looked for Jism. The raisin had once more fallen out of his ear. He brushed his hands across the sandy pavement but found nothing.
John turned his head to see Richard’s face hit the hood of the Jeep.
Then he felt the stinging heat of the baton across his back and felt the first convulsing flash from the taser stick.
Chapter 21
Baku
Azerbaijan
Ibn Aminzadeh drove with his four bodyguards to a new nightclub called the Gusher. It was far north of Baku on the Caspian Sea. That night the 53-year-old president of Azerbaijan had left the palace through the back entrance.
He now walked into the Gusher through the front door.
Nude belly dancers writhed on the main stage and watched him as he walked next to the bar and through the crowd to his own room in the storage area. Two of the nude dancers wore wigs of wriggling green snakes with four heads each. Nanochips studded the plastic snakes and let them writhe in unison and in novel patterns. The girls had learned which patterns most pleased the crowd of Russian gangsters and oil-rich Shiites and Japanese businessmen.
Jo
el Davis sat at the old-fashioned zinc bar and kept his face close to his glass of vodka. Davis did not look up when Aminzadeh walked past with his four bodyguards.
One of the guards had a thick black beard and massive chest and stayed at the zinc bar. He ordered champagne and vodka and the rare and expensive yellow caviar. Davis did not look up at him either.
The bearded guard paid for his order with four Singapore dragons from the year 2016. The one-troy-ounce coins were pure gold. The bartender felt their weight in his hand for a moment before he put three of them in the bar safe. He kept the other dragon as a tip. Then the bearded guard tipped all the girls who came by and kissed him on the cheek. He tipped them in Azeri cash.
A second guard with broken front teeth came out and paid the floor manager for two of the girls. One girl was a fake blonde from Cyprus and the other was a thin dark teenager from Baku. The Iranian owner of the Gusher had paid for both girls to have homeobox gene implants. The new genes let the girls slowly grow much fuller breasts than they had been born with. The new breasts had no scars and no Cooper’s droop.
The girls followed the second guard back to Aminzadeh’s private room. The bearded guard returned to the bar to drink a dry martini.
Joel Davis finished his vodka and ordered a mug of Ukrainian honey ale and a plate of fresh green mussels. He also paid with precious metal but in the small heavy platinum coins from Yakutsk that the gangsters preferred to use. He had drunk eight vodkas so far tonight and the bartender thought he would pass out soon. Davis used to get sick after drinking only five vodkas.
Now it did not matter.
His flesh and DNA mattered no more to him than did the gray pinstripe suit he wore to look like a Russian tough. The chic silver baseball hat he wore covered the fresh plastic scars and nanostitches in his scalp. A thick egg of lead enclosed his chip brain to protect it from bursts of high energy.
The Joel Davis who had once played in the salty waters of the Dead Sea and had scored the winning goal of his high school soccer team had lived in a three-pound brain. That great knot of neural networks now lay far to the south in thin slices on a rock in the Qareh Dahg Mountains. The young shepherd boy Jahangir now played his flute and sat next to the rock and the dried brain slices that the hawks and ants had not yet eaten.
The Davis chiphead waited five minutes from the time the second guard had paid for the two dancers. The guard had walked back to the private room with one girl on each arm. Davis finished the plate of mussels and then pulled a black ball the size of a golf ball from his coat pocket.
He left the bar for the men’s room. He went into one of the new chrome stalls and threw up the mussels and ale and vodka that churned in his stomach. That cleared the room of the lone man at the urinal. Then he touched the leads of a small million-volt taser to the black ball. The taser charged its small core of iridium and charged the plasma trapped in the magnetic plastic sphere.
Davis left the men’s room and walked back toward the storage area. The three guards stood outside Aminzadeh’s door and took turns kissing one of the older dancers with wiry red hair. They stopped when they saw Davis.
“Wrong way,” the guard with broken teeth said.
Davis did not answer. He threw the ball with great strength at a clear section of the plastic floor in front of them.
The magnetic sphere broke on impact and let loose a growing cloud of blue-green plasma. The plasma cloud was largely stable but had an unstable corona-like surface where the ionic gas met the air in the room. The cloud’s core was a fleeting superhot fireball. The extreme temperature produced a large pressure wave in the air much as lightning produced thunder in the sky.
The tiny shock wave destroyed the eardrums of the three guards and the redheaded dancer. The Davis chiphead could see the electrical explosion as if in slow motion. He blocked its auditory nerve paths as the pressure wave burst his own eardrums.
The blue-green plasma ball gave off a sharp electromagnetic pulse as it expanded outward and decayed. The three guards and the dancer were close enough that the intense EMP energy burned out their retinas and scrambled the neural circuits in their brains. The EMP bounced off the lead casing of the Davis chiphead and burned out only a few of the rods and cones in his eyes.
The EMP knocked out the power and lights in the Gusher. It killed the fake green snakes on the heads of the two belly dancers onstage.
Joel Davis ran past the thrashing guards and dancer and kicked opened the door to Aminzadeh’s room. Two long white candles gave off the only light in the room. A stunned and naked Aminzadeh tried to dismount from the teenage dancer but was too close to orgasm to withdraw. The blond dancer jumped from the couple on the bed and tried to pull the dark bed sheet up to cover her breasts.
Davis drew a pellet pistol and loaded it with an ice heart dart from a small Dewar flask. Davis shot Aminzadeh in the right buttock with the dart. The blond dancer dropped the bed sheet and screamed at Davis. He stood still to watch.
The thin ice dart melted in the warm muscle tissue of Aminzadeh’s buttock. There it released a mix of brucine and potassium into the married man’s bloodstream. Aminzadeh fell from the screaming Baku teenager and convulsed on the bed in a massive heart attack. His face quickly turned white from lack of blood. Then he lost consciousness.
The blond dancer knocked over the white candles as she and the Baku teenager ran naked and screaming past Davis.
The bearded agent from the bar ran to the room with his Redhawk .44 Magnum drawn. He found only his president lying still. The guard lost all light when he stomped out the carpet fire that the candles had started.
Chapter 22
Walnut
Southern California
Major Eytan Baum paced the length of a large white freezer truck parked behind the Hong Kong Market in Walnut. Baum paced to help him think and to reduce the paunch he had grown in the last decade.
An elderly Jewish couple in Walnut held the California license on the freezer truck. Baum had used it twice before for U.S. operations and both times felt his mild claustrophobia grow to a slight panic.
This time it was worse.
He had been in the gadget-packed truck when the Saudis bombed his desalination plant in Eilat and when AMAN had lost Joel Davis and when the Azers had lost their pipeline. He did not trust Avi Hurwicz in Tel Aviv to keep him fully informed. So he and his U.S. crew might be at greater risk than the risk they already took as spies on U.S. soil.
A small black Mustang parked in front of the Chinese market to let out Daniel and Raquel. The couple had shed their fake leather jackets and now wore blue and green T-shirts and blue jeans that matched the warm sunny morning in June. They had coffee and sweet buns before they walked around back to Baum’s unmarked freezer truck.
They found the back gate unlocked and quickly let themselves in.
“The chips,” Baum said.
Daniel gave him the burnt Tabriz chip and Raquel gave him the backup chip. She also pulled the two small optical tapes from her shopping bag and gave them to one of Baum’s three crew members.
Eytan held the Tabriz chip to the panel lights on the green wall. He shook his head and handed the chip to his lead technician Schlomo Ravin. The young Israeli smiled. He took the small square of burnt silicon and melted gold to the optical display at the front corner of the truck.
“Good,” Baum said in Hebrew. “Now you two go back to Catton and help him put Cheng on ice. We’ll cover all expenses for the transport. It’s the least we can do.”
Daniel nodded.
Raquel was not so sure.
“Will the CIA ice Grant too?” she said.
“Not if you can help it. And they know better than to do that to an Israeli. They think Grant works for us.”
Chapter 23
Baku
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan had the biggest airport on the Caspian Sea. The terminals were spacious and clean. Their motif of silver and black gave no hint of the squalor found in much of Ba
ku. New robotic conveyor belts brought luggage to passengers after they landed. Many of the walls seemed to swirl with 3-D art. Some of the holographic images showed the oil history of Azerbaijan and the Great Game many countries had once played there. Other wall images showed the nation’s grand vision of a future based not on oil but on science and worker cooperation.
The airport also had the best security on the Caspian.
When each person arrived they gave a palm print to a flat black sensor board on a customs desk as they passed into the customs area. Gabor wavelets first compressed the palm pattern. The wavelets picked only the brightest leaves on the palm print’s abstract transform tree. The wavelets ignored the duller leaves that described less of the pattern. Then neural nets stored the compressed palm pattern in the Azer police database. There the state computers matched it against the hundreds of millions of other compressed palm prints in the shared databases of over 100 countries.
The visitor saw only a green light or a red light after he gave the palm print.
The green light meant that he could pass freely through customs and that the computer search had found no active police warrants for him or warnings about him. The red light meant that the so-called “probability mechanism” had randomly picked him for a complete search of his person and his luggage. Then he would walk to the search area and hope that the armed Azer guards found him too rich to harass or too poor to extort. The random system chose on average fewer than 1 in 20 persons to search.
Ticket holders went through much of this process in reverse when they left the airport. They passed their carry-on luggage through clear rectangles of neural shape detectors. Then they gave their palm prints and walked through a metal detector. The palm print again flashed a random green light or red light that told the guards whether to ignore the person or to search him and his carry-on luggage.
Then the palm pattern soon circled the world and told member governments where the person was at that moment.
The Joel Davis chiphead had no chance of passing safely through the metal detector. The device would detect its chip encased in the egg of lead.