by Sean Salazar
Betty took another sip of coffee, ignoring the small mess she made. She startled herself when she noticed that she had tried to drink her muffin, which was now crumbled on her face and lap. “Oh dear, I’m really losing it,” she whispered.
Now embarrassed, and as casually as she could, she wiped her mouth and lap, sweeping the crumbs of her muffin onto the ground. As she did this, she noticed the waiter glaring at her, but behind him, a short distance away near the street corner, were two men. One of them spoke into his collar, looking alert. It took a second for her mind to register the waiter gazing at her stupid mistake, and the two men behind him. The men had not looked in her direction yet.
She froze. They tracked her to the port, but how? She thought about the several ports along the Mediterranean that ferries traveled to, but there was no way they would know for sure. She continued to analyze the possible strategies they would use to track her. “Yes,” she whispered, “they are searching every possible port.” Which, the more she thought about it, made sense for the hunters.
She leaned forward out of the men’s view and placed her briefcase from the table onto her lap. She unlocked and slowly opened it. She had an idea that would either clear her paranoid mind or get her killed or captured. She noticed the waiter had moved on, probably dismissing her as a crazy person. As she pondered her new-found craziness and paranoia, she picked up a conversation in English taking place on her right. Her ears purposely filtered out some words coming from a casual conversation. A woman had just asked her companion what she thought about the massacre in Georgia.
Massacre, she thought. Leaning to the side, she tried her best to listen in on the conversation, but their voices now blended in with the others. She then turned back to see the men on the corner; they were still there observing the other side of the street.
She pulled her hands away from the computer case and postponed her test because she really wanted to get information on the massacre. She was certain she heard one of them say Georgia, but was it the Georgia in Eastern Europe, or the American State of Georgia? Dozens of Muslim and Christian massacres had occurred since the first one in Sidon, Lebanon; but a massacre in the United States? That would be a stretch. Or would it? She decided to simply ask, so she turned back to the table with the two women speaking next to her and said, “Excuse me.”
The woman turned to her and answered, “Yes?”
“Did you hear about a massacre in Georgia?”
“Oh, yes, just dreadful,” the younger woman said.
“May I ask which Georgia? I hadn’t heard yet.”
“The States,” she answered, pointing to her lips.
“Thank you,” Betty said, realizing the woman was gesturing to her that she still had crumbs stuck on her face. Embarrassed, she wiped her face again and sat back, wondering when the attack occurred. The way news traveled these days the massacre could have happened just minutes ago.
Betty glanced over at the two men. They were still there, and her computer was ready. The second it came on, someone would pick up its electronic signature. If so, and if they were following her signal, those men would be spurred to action and then she would know for sure that she was being hunted. The question remained, though, just how quickly could her actual location be determined? Would they just know the general location, such as within a square kilometer, or within a square meter, such as where she actually sat at the café? She had to get the message to Ed, so either way that question had to be answered soon. With the tips of her fingers, she slowly lifted the case and turned on the computer.
She waited for a few seconds and the two men did nothing but stand there, which was fine with her. She even took a few sips of her coffee, carefully observing them. Very well, she thought, the simple act of turning the computer on did not appear to alert anyone; at least not these two individuals. She now wondered if they were following her at all. She moved the cursor and opened the program file that contained the downloaded information first. She continued to check that her computer was not accessing the Internet and that her security software was doing its job.
So far, so good.
She looked over the information for a few more minutes, filtering out the urgent batch. One thing for certain—this information had to get to Ed as soon as possible. She looked up at the two men to see if they had changed their demeanor. They seemed to have changed positions but were still within her view. She glanced back down, deciding to divide the information into two parts.
The first message she had already sent earlier involved her and Ed’s good friend Alex Pike. From what she could determine, he was possibly still alive and being interrogated in Spain.
The second message was confirming that they were battling not only the Brotherhood but a rebel faction within the Vatican, and it was not who she thought it was. A large part of her wanted to delve deeper to determine more about who this faction was, but right now that was not her job. She simply needed to get the information to Ed and let him decipher it. She took a deep breath as she prepared to send the messages.
Her plan was to forward the file to her trusted SAS men, and they would get it to Ed. Next, she put the cursor over the icon that would temporarily open her system to the Internet using British military satellites. All she had to do was click it, send the message, then shut down. She swallowed hard, glancing up at the two men. She put her finger over the key and, without taking her eyes off the men, pressed it. She glanced down without moving her head. In a split microsecond, the message electronically transferred via her computer, to the Internet, to the satellite, and to her SAS friends. She clicked the icon again, disconnecting her system, and powered down.
Betty glanced up, slowly closing the computer case and then placing it on the ground next to her leg. She looked straight ahead and waited. Eventually, she realized that she must be portraying a statue and turned her head toward the two men on the corner. What she saw confirmed her fears. The men now looked clearly alerted to something and were now looking around. One of them pressed his hand on his ear, attentive to instructions coming in through his earpiece.
For years, she was the one giving instructions to agents on the hunt all over the world and now she was being hunted. She humorously imagined a Catholic cardinal or a priest giving instructions to be on the lookout for an incredibly attractive and graceful older woman. Both men exchanged a few words and turned in her direction. She reached down by her leg, locked the computer case, and as casually as she could, lifted the cup and, despite her shaking hands, took another sip of coffee. This was the moment she would find out if they were looking for her. That would also mean that they knew what she looked like, and with that possible revelation her hands began to shake even more. She lowered the cup to the table and when she felt it connect with the saucer, she slipped her hands below the table and waited.
After a few seconds, she slowly glanced in their direction. They were still there and had not come for her. With that, she reached another conclusion. They do not know what I look like. That fact calmed her nerves. Therefore, they must be exclusively tracking the computer signal. She considered the method she would normally use if the situation were reversed.
The first thing would be to identify and then begin tracking the computer signal; that would be Phase One. Then, begin triangulating the general location; Phase Two. That must be the path they are on now, she guessed. But the question was, how were they doing it? How could they track her encrypted signal? The Vatican must be more sophisticated than she realized.
Betty glanced over again, assuming that the roaming agents searching for her were patiently waiting for her system to be activated for a few minutes, not mere seconds. Then it occurred to her that the stolen Vatican program must have been imbedded with a beacon of some sort. It was definitely something she had never heard of and if that was the case, then uploading and broadcasting it from another computer would be a fatal mistake that they were planning on. She then concluded that her hard drive must have also been infe
cted and corrupted by the beacon virus.
She decided to push her luck and make a break for it, but she had to be unpredictable, because predictability was what the Vatican was predicting. She reached down, gripped the computer case, and stood up. She made her way from the café in the opposite direction of the patrolling Vatican soldiers. She had to conceal her obvious computer case, because if she were in their place, that would be what she was looking for. As she walked, she resisted the urge to look back and focused on remaining calm.
Suddenly, she heard someone yelling, and then footsteps pounding behind her. She glanced over as she passed another café and her toe suddenly caught a crack in the sidewalk and she stumbled. When she composed herself, she noticed all eyes were upon her just as a strong hand grabbed her arm. She closed her eyes, expecting a solid object to collide with her head, but only felt her body jerked back. She gripped her case as her last attempt to protect it before it was ripped from her possession. Tears welled up and she knew she was done for. The yelling continued and she opened her eyes to face her attacker, unsure why they were bothering with the yelling bit. As her eyes focused through the tears, she realized what had just happened. She forgot to pay her bill and the waiter was demanding payment. She put the case down, opened her wallet, and handed him a wad of money. He gave her a surprised look and with her eyes wide open, she said, “Keep it.” Without even waiting to hear his response, she grabbed her case and hailed a cab. Immediately one pulled over and she climbed in.
“Destination,” the driver asked in Spanish.
“Just drive,” Betty replied, drying her eyes with her sleeve while glancing out the back window. After a few seconds, she didn’t see anyone that seemed to be following her, turned around and attempted to relax. This entire episode had her mind racing for all avenues of escape but exactly how wasn’t coming to her. She eyed a corner approaching and said, “Make a left here.”
The driver slowed, made the left turn and continued. Betty again carefully watched through the back window for pursuers. No cars came speeding around after her so she turned back around.
The driver glanced into the rearview mirror as he passed each corner in anticipation of her last-second direction changes. She sensed that he was confused and added, “Can you simply drive around the city?”
He appeared to understand and began a random route. That gave her a chance to calm down, accept the lethal possibilities of the situation, and figure out what her next plan was, if there was one.
Eventually she noticed the same structures and shops passing by indicating that the driver had gone around the city or made a circle at least once. It was obvious because many of the shops had a very distinct old-Spanish style look in contrast to the more modern types.
As she watched her café go by, Betty noticed the two Vatican men were not there on the corner. There were plenty of people walking about and they could simply be among them so she tried not to be concerned about it, but at that moment, something occurred to her. She leaned forward and said, “Can you drive that same route one more time?”
“Yes,” he replied, and made the initial left turn as before.
This time she paid more attention to the shops as they passed by. When she saw what looked like a small computer repair shop said, “Stop here.”
The driver immediately pulled over.
She stepped out of the taxi with her briefcase and motioned for the driver to wait there.
He nodded with a semi-interested smile and she entered the small shop. It was narrow with shelves of refurbished computers on the left and a young man with a pony tail sitting at a large desk on the right. Several disassembled computers were scattered about on and to the sides of the desk. The young man appeared to be working on a project and stood up to greet her. Before he could say anything, Betty pointed, “I would like that laptop right there.” A general rule when traveling about was to speak first, allowing the locals to volunteer their English if they knew any.
He eyed her and she could smell the telltale signs of vodka.
“It’s a very good computer,” he replied, pulling it off the shelf. “I just received it.” At that moment, the vodka made perfect sense because the young man had a Russian accent.
As he was putting it in the box, she stopped him and said, “I’ll take it the way it is,” and then asked, “is it charged?”
He was slightly puzzled and replied, “Yes, of course.”
“Fine,” she said, paid for it, and walked out of the shop.
Climbing into the taxi, she simply motioned for him to continue driving in circles. She then placed the briefcase on her lap, opened it, and hatched out a plan. Next, she powered up the new laptop, prepared it, and then connected the two together with a data transfer cord. Once she ensured it was not possible to access the Internet, she began transferring a copy of the entire Vatican file to the new computer. This took several minutes and as it did, she carefully observed the town as it passed by. Eventually she saw what looked like a small park and asked the driver to pull over. She noticed that she was only a couple of blocks from the café and half a block from the park, which made her plan even more risky.
After a few minutes the driver turned off the engine to conserve fuel. She unplugged the new computer from hers and prepared it to access the Internet. What she was attempting was risking her life because the new computer did not have the security software that hers did, but whatever she was going to do, she had to do quickly. Again, she asked the driver to wait and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Slowly she made her way to the small park and saw the only bench available, which sat directly in front of a small patch of bushes.
She sat down and casually placed the new computer on her lap. Next, she pulled up the Vatican program and glanced around. There were no pedestrians around so she gathered her nerves and began to access the Internet. She then placed the computer under the bench, pushed it back into the bushes and quickly walked back to the taxi.
The driver, who seemed to be enjoying himself with Betty’s apparent odd actions, twisted around and asked, “What would you like to do now?”
She raised her finger and told him to hold on, and just as she said that a sudden shock went through her. There were three men standing by the bench and one was holding the computer. That was much faster than she anticipated so she quickly pulled out her computer and typed in a message, “LOOK LEFT.” She glanced over and watched the three men all turn left. She then typed in, “LOOK RIGHT,” and they all in unison turned right and looked around. At that moment she relaxed and released a slight laugh for the first time in days, realizing that many of her questions were answered. She powered down her computer and said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fifteen
Washington, D.C.
After Director Churchill and General Burke had departed, Ed and Natalie were rapidly escorted out of the bunker complex. Once outside, the rain had increased in volume and the wind blew heavily at the two of them. The CIA man opened the car door and Natalie, clutching her papers so they wouldn’t blow away, climbed in first, with Ed right behind her. As soon as the door closed, Ed said to the driver, “Take us to the back entrance of the underground complex.”
He then turned to Natalie, “Now, young lady, please proceed with what you have discovered.”
Once the driver pulled out into the main road, they picked up speed. The sudden right and left jerking indicated that the driver was definitely following orders, getting back to the Whit House as rapidly as possible.
Natalie unloaded her wet and wrinkled papers onto her lap and seemed stunned for a brief moment. With softness in her eyes, she said. “Ed, I want to thank you for letting me help with this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”
“You have done quite well, my dear,” Ed said and then added, “My complex in London was destroyed, killing my personal researcher and assistant, so your help is appreciated more than you realize.”
Her chest rose, then lowered, as she visibly breathed a huge
sigh of relief. She then placed both of her palms onto the pile of crinkled papers, and pushed down to flatten them out. She fished out one page as she moved the pile over slightly, and held it up.
“After the bomb exploded and everyone scattered, I did what you asked and took another look at the Washington Monument and I didn’t find anything.” She paused and pulled out more pages. “I had learned that the obelisks in Paris and London had both been vandalized.”
“In what way?”
“Once I got the local authorities to look, with a little bribing, they found items similar to what we found by the Washington Circle. I asked them to hold on to them so you could take a look.”
“Very good,” Ed said. “How did you get the Paris police to assist you so fast?”
“I sent the pictures of the items we found there and the officer asked me out on a date.”
Ed laughed, “That might come in handy.”
As the car continued to move through traffic, Ed twisted his body to look outside the rain-pelted rear window. He noticed a car with flashing lights following them through traffic. He turned back as he felt his PDA buzzing. He pulled it out and saw a message from Al. “Just a moment, my dear.” He read the message:
“-Alex Pike is alive and en route to Washington D.C. as per your instructions.”
Ed tried hard not to flash an ear-to-ear grin, but could not resist. “Oh my, he found him,” Ed said excitedly, checking his watch.
“That’s good news.”
“Yes, it is,” he answered with a slow nod. “My friend was presumed dead and found alive.”