BETA - Project Avatar, page 23
She frowned and rubbed her head, wondering how she felt about that. It was one thing to let an old and trusted friend like Abe assign her an identity. It was something else altogether to let supposedly former MI-6 agent John Henley-Wright do it.
“Okay, thanks,” she said, leaving the matter for the moment.
She wandered into the bathroom to indulge in a long, luxurious shower.
Returning to the room wrapped in a bathrobe, she dug around in her shoulder bag, pulled out her smartphone, and plugged it in to recharge.
When it powered back on, she noticed a text message from her sister, Cecilia:
CALL ME! U PROMISED! >:( CEE
Dee groaned and checked her watch. “Pushy,” she muttered aloud. It hadn’t been quite twenty-four hours since she promised Cecilia she would call. And she didn’t feel like making a family phone call from this den of spies. With luck, she could take a walk outside a little later and find some park with a quiet bench from which she could assure Cecilia that she was safe and well.
She erased the message, then typed a command to Beta: “Call Abe.”
Then she spent a good half hour preening before she layered up against the cold, starting with a pair of navy twill pants and finishing with an aqua button-down charmeuse top. By the time she came out of the bathroom, she was back in good form.
John wasn’t in the loft room, so she poured herself some coffee. That raised her spirits enough that she began eating. She made a light breakfast, and it simply vanished into her as if it had never been there. So she made another, more substantial breakfast, and it also disappeared.
Still no call from Abe. She flipped open her laptop and told Beta to accept internet phone calls on the computer rather than on the phone. Leaving her smartphone to continue recharging, she went looking for John, carrying the laptop with her.
She found him in a sort of workshop, up a narrow flight of wooden stairs. The workshop was directly under the peaked roof, in a well-furnished, well-lighted attic space. He was sitting at a drafting table surrounded by computers, a camera table, and a miscellany of photocopying and fax equipment.
He looked over his shoulder and gave her an ingenuous smile. “You look much improved, I daresay. Hope dawns once more.”
“Yes, I feel much better, thanks,” she said. “What’s all this?”
“Tools of the trade,” he said, swiveling around in his chair. “They say this house was a great favorite for our lads, back in Cold War days. Well situated, middle of the North Atlantic and all that. Now look at it: still bursting with potential, and no one ever uses it.” His arm swept around the room at the expensive equipment, much of it late-model and surely bought within the past few years. “Obviously, it’s also bursting with funds from Her Majesty’s coffers. Someone really should assess this place.”
She moved closer to the drafting table. “Is that a passport?” she said, looking over his shoulder.
“Yes, I was thinking of making you Canadian. What do you say? Think you can pass?” He looked up at her and smiled. He is awfully charming, she thought to herself.
“Sure. I’ve been passing as Irish, and no one’s so much as asked.”
He rolled his chair a few feet to the right and opened a tall cabinet. It had two shelves of Styrofoam heads sporting wigs, and several more shelves of cosmetics, creams, false beards, and other stagecraft props. “How would you like to be a blonde?”
The next hour was surprisingly fun. John took Dee’s photo from several angles, and then called up a computer program that reconstructed her in three dimensions. Using the model as a starting point, it allowed them to build a virtual identity for her by varying a wide array of parameters: hairstyle, complexion, eye color—the choices went on and on.
She found herself wondering if Beta might not have some sort of application like this built into its code somewhere. Of course it does. Beta is probably brimming with all kinds of useful things I would never think to ask it for.
When she had finally made her selections, John provided her not only with ironed, shoulder-length blond hair but also a pair of marvelous tinted contact lenses that deepened the blue of her eyes to a strikingly rich shade. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror, holding her head high and giving a scowling pout, her eyes half-lidded. She looked like a classic femme fatale.
A girl could probably marry somebody pretty rich, looking like this, she joked to herself.
When she was all made up, John stepped back to admire his handiwork. “You are sensational,” he marveled. He reached out his hand, and she took it. He pulled her closer and put his arm around her shoulder. She felt a little surge of adrenaline. Then, almost as suddenly, he let go and ushered her to a chair.
He sat her in front of the camera to take her passport photo. “While you were sleeping,” he said, “I had a simply riveting chat with some chaps I know in home office. It seems that your old mate, Brice Petronille, has the oddest connection to your comatose colleague, Ed.”
Dee stiffened, bracing herself. Naturally, he chose that precise moment to snap her photo.
“Yes,” he continued, tapping his keyboard to move the photo into a postprocessor. “It turns out that Petronille was involved with a company called XCorp. They were tapping Petronille’s military contacts for information about a software bid. As it turns out, they were too slow and Endyne beat them to the post. Rather suspicious, wouldn’t you say?”
She realized that she was knitting her fingers together tensely. She unraveled them and put them on her knee. “How about that,” she said, trying to look and sound as if this were news to her.
“How about it, indeed,” John replied. He hit the print button and glanced at her over his shoulder. “XCorp wanted to militarize the software and sell it to the Pentagon. Or so it’s said.”
“Really?” she replied, and then winced at the sound of her own voice. Definitely not catching the inflections quite right.
Just then a small, clipped version of Dee’s voice piped up, speaking from her laptop computer, perched on a nearby table.
“You are receiving an incoming video telephone call from Abe,” Beta said. “Would you like me to place this call on screen?”
John swiveled his chair around, turning his back to his workstation. “Hullo! Abe is just the man I was hoping to speak to. Would you mind if I sit in on this?”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot and glanced over her shoulder toward the computer. “Well, I don’t think . . .”
“Repeat,” Beta said. “You are receiving an incoming telephone call from Abe.”
He looked at the computer and pursed his lips. “Say, what the devil is that little voice? That’s not a recording.”
“No, it’s a . . . communication application. Don’t be so nosy.” She took a tentative step backward.
He rolled to his feet and moved nimbly between Dee and her computer, much faster than she had expected, screening her away from it like a goalie defending a net. It was both playful and very effective; there was no way she could reach her laptop. “Here, now!” he said, chuckling mischievously. “I may not have known you so long, but I do believe you’re hiding something.”
“I am now entering answering service mode,” Beta announced. Then, to Dee’s mortification, it said in a perfect copy of her own telephone voice: “Hi, Abe. Thanks for getting back to me so quick.”
Abe’s voice came through in reply. He sounded furious. “Well, I’m glad to hear someone sounding cheerful,” he said sarcastically. “What happened back there?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but John quickly touched her lips with his fingertip. She was so surprised that for a moment she was speechless.
“Back where?” Beta asked innocently.
“You know where,” Abe sputtered. “In Geneva. Where’s Ramsey?”
“I don’t understand the question,” Beta replied, expertly miming a Dee-like tone of confusion. “Would you like to hear a menu?”
Abe was silent for a moment. At last, he said, “What . . . the . . . hell?”
She shoved John out of the way and stepped over to the table. “That’s enough, Beta,” she said. “I’ll take the call. Go ahead and open the video link.”
Abe’s face came on the screen. He was on a balcony over a pool somewhere, wearing only Bermuda shorts. He had splotches of sunburn on his nose and shoulders, though the rest of him was as white as mashed potatoes. A number of empty beer cans with labels in a strange script were evident in the foreground, between Abe and the webcam.
He leaned forward, shading his face from the sunlight and squinting at the screen. “Hi, Dee,” he grumbled, forcing some civility. “Oh, hi, John.”
“Hello, Abe,” John replied from behind her shoulder. “You certainly are looking comfortable.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m in Greece.” He looked around blankly, as if just remembering where he was. “Some island, I forget which one. Dee, who was I just talking to? Was that your personal assistant gizmo that Ed installed for you?”
“Yes,” she admitted, glancing back awkwardly at John. “That was Beta.”
“That thing’s incredible!” Abe lifted a beer to his lips. He seemed to have forgotten to be angry, for the moment. He leaned closer to the screen, inspecting it, then added, “And wow, you look great as a blonde! Hot stuff. Did John dress you up that way, or did you do it yourself?”
Neither of them dignified the question with a response. John stepped forward to stand beside Dee and said, “Fill me in, you two. I’m presuming that I have just seen a demonstration of the Endyne software?”
Dee nodded. “Beta, display yourself on screen.”
Beta’s full-length image appeared on the right edge of the screen and gave them all a cheerful wave.
“Whoa!” Abe exclaimed. “It’s perfect! Did it put together that whole image by itself?”
“It uses some sort of adaptive emulation,” she told John. “A few days ago, both the voice and the image were generic. Just an off-the-shelf cartoon.”
John nodded. “Is that so?” he said pensively. “Remarkable.”
“This is going to be the biggest software release of the decade!” Abe marveled.
“I hate to disappoint you,” she said, “but there is never going to be a release of this software to the public market. Not this version, anyway.”
Abe remembered that he was supposed to be angry. His sun-reddened forehead lowered over his eyes. “Listen, let’s get back to the point,” he said. “What the hell happened to Ramsey? No one seems to know where he is today.”
Dee opened her mouth to reply, and found herself choking on the words. She tried to speak, failed, then paused and tried again. “Ramsey’s dead. They shot him . . . I saw them shoot him. Right in front of me.”
Abe and John were silent. She looked around for a chair, sat down, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Shit,” Abe said, drawing the word out over a full second. Then he lifted his beer and drained half the can.
“Was Ramsey your contact in Geneva?” John asked, placing a hand on Dee’s shoulder.
She found a tissue and wiped her eyes. Then she took a deep breath and got hold of herself. “Yes. He wasn’t a personal friend or anything, but he was trying to help me. He was the guy Abe arranged for me to meet.”
“Truth is, I never actually met him,” Abe admitted. “Though he seemed like a nice guy. We just texted a lot of tech gossip back and forth over the years. Dee, who shot him?”
“The same people who chased me in India. UMBRA. But this time they had Holtz with them—the hijacker.”
Abe and John were silent again, both of them looking serious and thoughtful.
“Holtz? This is the hijacker John saw being chummy with the UMBRA guys in the so-called interrogation at Hotel Uncle Sam, right?” Abe asked, evidently trying to piece the details together.
Dee nodded and dabbed her eyes.
John said, “Well. No wonder you looked so distraught last night. I won’t even ask if you ever intended to mention this to me.”
“But she did tell you she was meeting Ramsey, didn’t she?” Abe asked suspiciously. John did not answer but scowled and crossed his arms. “When did it happen?” Abe went on.
“Around six yesterday evening,” she told him.
“Initial discharge of gunfire occurred at 5:46 p.m., Western European Summer Time,” Beta corrected her. The figure on the right side of the screen shifted its weight and gave them a confident smile.
For the third time in as many minutes, John and Abe were silent.
“That is just weird,” Abe said at last. “Your avatar just said something really weird.”
“Perhaps some sort of explanation is in order,” John proposed.
So she caught them up on what she could: the black van, the UMBRA agents, Ramsey’s death, the breakneck car chase, her narrow escape in a Geneva alleyway. She left out only one part: her belief that answers to some of her questions might be waiting in Rio de Janeiro, at the headquarters of XCorp do Sul.
Abe’s first comment was, “Oh, shit! That was a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car. What am I going to tell my friend in Bern?”
She gave him an exasperated look. “I don’t know. Maybe it was insured. Anyway, quit exaggerating. Beta, how much does an Audi R8 cost?”
“Sticker price on a new Audi R8 is $148,900 U.S. dollars.”
“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” Abe grumbled. “Here I thought it was expensive.”
John interrupted: “Do let’s try to keep our eyes on the ball, shall we? Dee, tell us a little more about your friend Beta’s role in your evening’s adventures. When you say it was ‘giving you instructions,’ what do you mean? What sort of instructions?”
She thought for a moment, looking for the best way to explain it. Then she said to her computer, “Beta, John is not a friend. He’s an enemy. He is pursuing me. What should I do?”
Beta smiled politely, and its little head cocked slightly to one side, showing interest. “I am now entering advisory mode. What is your objective in this situation?”
She looked at John. “I’d like to kill John, please. Then I suppose I’ll need to escape the country.”
“I am entering calculation mode. One moment please.” Then, a few seconds later: “GPS analysis shows that you are on the third floor. Shoot the target once in mid-torso and once in the head. Then advance to street level, rapidly but with caution.”
“Good lord!” John exclaimed.
“But, Beta,” she said “I forgot to bring my gun again. Can’t I kill him some other way?”
“Your proximity to the target is too close for confident operations. Advance downstairs with maximum haste, taking evasive action. Acquire a sharp and/or heavy object. Probability of successful completion is three to twelve percent.”
John arched his eyebrows. “Well, at least the odds are in my favor.”
“You can leave advisory mode now, Beta,” she said. “John is a friend again.”
John and Abe looked at each other’s on-screen images. John said to Dee, “What a handy little gadget to have around. I’m starting to see what all the fuss is about.”
Abe was shaking his head. “You’re right, Dee,” he said ruefully. “That thing is definitely not ready for product release. Damn! I just moved a bundle into Endyne stock.”
“The most amazing thing,” John said, “is that it knew our altitude above street level with such precision. That’s not civilian GPS technology.”
“No way,” Abe concurred. “That thing is unscrambling a military satellite feed. Hey, that would account for all the communications with military IP addresses that we’ve been seeing on your Sub line.”
John looked at Dee with narrowed eyes. “Any comment? Any rough notion of how your desktop app happens to have higher clearance than I do?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t understand any of this at all. Ramsey said the original code was sold to Endyne as scrap from some military R&D project. But I don’t think anyone at Endyne has military clearance above level two. So why would the Pentagon sell them code like this?”
“You know, the simplest explanation is that somebody screwed up royally,” Abe said.
“But surely that can’t explain everything,” she said.
John nodded, apparently weighing the matter in his head. “Yes. Yes, Abe’s hypothesis is consistent with the known facts.”
“See, your problem,” Abe said to Dee, “is that you have too much faith in human competence.”
“There is something to what he says, Dee. I wish I could argue that we live in a world where the oversight of military matters is handled only by far-sighted men, after profound deliberation. But alas, all too often, they botch the job,” John added.
“Okay, I suppose it’s a possibility,” she said. “But that wouldn’t explain why UMBRA’s after me. What do they have to do with it?”
John and Abe looked at each other for a moment again before either replied.
“You got me,” Abe admitted.
“I don’t think we know the answer to that question yet,” John said. “Somehow, I doubt that they are acting under official auspices. Their behavior is far too rash.”
“Maybe they’re working for hire,” Abe suggested. “Maybe XCorp hired them.”
“Anything is possible,” John said dubiously. “On the other hand, if this Ramsey person was killed by uniformed soldiers last night and under Swiss security cameras as you say, then the event has been very effectively hushed up. My contact at Vauxhall Cross didn’t mention the incident to me at all, and I spoke to him just a couple of hours ago.”
“Just a second,” Abe said, turning to look at something off screen. Dee and John watched as he stood up and vanished from view. They could hear some incomprehensible talk in the background, and then chaos as Abe’s pudgy hand swept beer cans out of the view. A moment later he sat down and placed a huge platter of nachos on the table in front of him.
“Hope you don’t mind if I eat.” Abe scooped up a big mass of partially congealed food and stuffed it into his mouth.
