BETA - Project Avatar, page 32
As predicted, she found herself gazing upon the interior of a large bedroom, with elaborate furnishings showcasing an immense antique canopy bed. By the light filtering in through the gauze curtains, the surface of the bed appeared to be a lumpy mass of satin pillows and comforters. She noticed with relief that there appeared to be only one occupant: an especially massive lump near the head of the bed. The lump was giving off loud and regular snores.
“Do not approach the target without first preparing your semiautomatic handgun,” Beta said in a no-nonsense tone.
She cursed under her breath, but obediently she fetched the huge, ungainly Desert Eagle out of her shoulder bag. Then she took a step into the room, her heart pounding.
“The pistol is not fully prepared until it has been cocked and the safety lever has been switched to the off position.”
Dee stopped again, took control of her temper, and carefully pulled back the hammer at the rear of the gun’s eight-inch barrel. It took all the strength of both thumbs, but it snapped into place with a terribly loud clack.
“You may now approach the target,” Beta said.
As Dee tiptoed across the soft carpet toward the bed, she felt a strange transformation come over her. She noticed that her hands weren’t trembling anymore. In fact, she felt a weird calm that went beyond a simple sense of well-being. She felt empowered. She was crossing the bedroom of this powerful man, with a gun in her hand, clad in the black getup of a cat burglar or an assassin. To her surprise, she found herself flooded with a rush of elation, a sense of illicit empowerment that left her quite free of fear.
Suddenly, she could understand how this feeling might become addictive.
“Use the tape first,” Beta reminded her pedantically.
Dee stood above the fat, snoring man on the immense satin bed. She fished out the roll of duct tape from her duffel bag and peeled off the six-inch strip that she had cut in advance and left stuck to the outside of the roll.
Holding the gun precariously in her right hand, she used her left to slap the tape firmly across the mouth of the sleeping man.
He awoke with a grunt, eyes wide as silver dollars. She waved the gun in front of those staring eyes, making sure he saw the glint of the blued steel in the dim light.
“Não faça um som, amigo,” she whispered. “Não se mova.” She hoped she had caught the pronunciation close enough to be understood. Not a sound. Don’t move.
A call button was certainly somewhere within arm’s reach of the bed, and pressing it would bring armed guards through the door in seconds. To her relief, the man on the bed didn’t look nearly as dangerous as she had anticipated.
Moacir Botelho, director of military contracts for XCorp do Sul, was, conservatively, a hundred pounds overweight and looked as though he had never fought anything tougher than a porterhouse steak. He certainly didn’t look capable of making any sudden moves.
“Is the target now subdued? If so, please say yes, aloud.”
“Yes.”
“Bind the target, in preparation for interrogation.”
Beta helpfully displayed a simplified diagram of the binding process on the screen of Dee’s smartphone, reminding her of the rather distasteful set of lessons on how to bind and interrogate that it had given her earlier this evening. She shuddered, then tore off a long strip of duct tape and gestured with her gun that her prisoner should roll over onto his belly. He whimpered into his pillow, but she ignored this and wrapped his wrists around and around until she had used up the entire long strip of tape. Then she tore off another strip and did the same for his ankles. Finally, she took an extension cord out of her bag, looped it between the fat man’s bound wrists and ankles, pulled it taut, and knotted it, leaving him hog-tied.
He lay on his side, staring at her. She sat down beside him and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then wiggled the big pistol’s muzzle at his nose and said quietly, “You probably speak English pretty well, don’t you?”
He hesitated for only a moment, and then nodded firmly once, down and up.
“That’s good, Moacir. Because I really need to chat with you. So I’m going to take the tape off your mouth, and then you and I will have a very quiet conversation. I don’t want you to raise your voice. If you raise your voice even a little bit, that will be the end of our conversation . . . right . . . there.” She punctuated the last words by tapping the tip of his nose with the muzzle of the gun, which had the diameter of a small garden hose.
Botelho nodded energetically, doing everything he could to assure her of his heartfelt cooperation. She grabbed the corner of the silvery tape and yanked it off his mouth with a quick tug.
Botelho drew in a big breath, and for about two seconds he looked as though he were going to yelp in pain. But his eyes stayed riveted on the gun, and he kept his silence. After a couple of deep breaths, he looked up at her and said, in perfect English and with considerable sincerity, “Thank you. I feel much better now. You are American?”
The question surprised her, but she humored him. “That’s right.”
The fat man gave an appreciative nod. “The American woman! Truly, there is nothing like her. Understand, I’m saying nothing bad about the Brazilian woman. No man in his right mind could say any bad thing about the Brazilian woman. But this . . . this could only be an American woman.”
“Okay, Moacir. Enough chitchat.”
“You must be . . . exquisitely beautiful under that mask.” He looked her up and down. “Your body, it is incredible. If only I could see your face! But I suppose that cannot be.”
She prodded him in the nose again with the gun, a little less gently. “Would you please shut up now? I don’t have all night.”
He nodded and smiled, looking resigned. “I would, of course, prefer to savor this moment, but I understand. Perhaps you need for me to tell you how to find my safe?”
“I’m not a burglar!” she hissed. “I’m sure I could find your safe if I wanted to. Here, tell me if this looks familiar. Beta, identify the location of the safe in this room.”
She held up her smartphone in front of Botelho’s face, letting him take a good look at the screen.
PROBABLE LOCATION OF SAFE:
False wall panel 58%
Behind painting 15%
Under rug 12%
Under counter of wet bar 8%
Botelho was speechless for a long moment, then said, “Okay, yes. It’s behind a false wall panel, right over there. What . . . what is that thing?”
“Don’t try to play me, Moacir. That’s what I’m here to find out. That’s what you’re going to tell me.”
Despite his bonds, Botelho wriggled on the bed, as if instinctively backing away from her and from the small, glowing screen in her hand.
He said: “It’s . . . O, meu deus, it’s Project Avatar!”
Chapter 32
Dee hesitated. “It’s what?”
“Please, miss! Whoever you are, please don’t torture me. I will answer your questions—anything!”
Dee stood up, nonplused. She looked down at the wriggling fat man on the bed. Whatever pleasure she had briefly felt from this break-in scenario was gone now.
“Well, I do have some questions for you.” she said.
“My company never stole any software from Project Avatar,” he blurted out. “I swear it. Those are lies, vicious lies. My enemies spread these lies. Even enemies within my own company! I swear to you, I have never seen this program before. Yes, I confess that I know of it. Many people know of it—perhaps too many. But I assure you that XCorp has no copy of the software.” He pinched his eyes shut tight. “I know who you are. Now, if I must die, please kill me quickly.”
She blinked at him. “Who do you think I am?”
“I have been dreading this moment for months, now. You are an assassin from the United States National Security Agency.” He paused, without opening his eyes. “Aren’t you?”
“No.” Dee blew an exasperated breath out through the mouth hole of her ski mask. “Are you kidding? The NSA has been trying to kill me for over a week now.” She propped her forearm on her hip. Her arms were getting tired from holding up the gun.
“Honestly?” He opened both eyes and looked up at her with almost palpable relief. “Then you . . . you haven’t come here to assassinate me?”
“No! I told you, I’m just here to ask questions.”
Dee sat back down on the edge of the bed and gazed into a shadowy corner of the room. She had no idea what to say now. “Um . . . the truth is, I thought you had arranged for the NSA to kill me.”
Botelho gave a half smile, as if the idea were too absurd to contemplate seriously. “My dear lady, I assure you, although I do not know who you are, if I heard of a plan to take your life then I would be deeply opposed. The waste, ah! It would be unforgivable.”
Dee narrowed her eyes. “Don’t get flippant. I want answers, and I don’t want to waste time. You know exactly what this software is. Do you deny that your company engaged in industrial espionage to steal secrets about it?”
“Oh, no, I don’t deny that.” Botelho gave an easy moue, as if to say this meant nothing.
“And that you employed Brice Petronille to obtain those secrets? That you planned to adapt the program for military purposes?”
“Yes, yes, yes, of course. Young lady, you are well informed, and I deny nothing. But this is far from a lethal conspiracy. It was only business. We heard of this software, and we investigated it, and yes, perhaps we used some slightly unorthodox pathways to gain the information we needed. This is all in a day’s work. But our sources indicated that the Project Avatar software was much more trouble than it was worth. For some reason, your Pentagon has assigned it a high level of classification, and also keeps it deeply buried in their archives. And as far as we can tell from our sources, the code released for bid is actually of very little use.”
“Little use?” Dee gazed at him, blinking and letting the phrase sink in. “You think this thing is of little use?”
She turned the speaker of her smartphone on, to its lowest setting, and held it near Botelho’s pudgy ear.
“Beta. Do you think there are armed men downstairs?”
“There is a ninety-two percent certainty that there are armed men downstairs.”
“How many?”
“There is a fifty-four percent chance that there are two. There is a twenty-eight percent chance that there are three.”
Botelho nodded, grudgingly impressed. “There are three. Unless Diogo has gone out to buy beer, in which case there are two. I think sometimes Diogo does that while I’m sleeping.”
“How are they armed, Beta?”
“The most probable arsenal is one fully automatic shotgun, three assault rifles, which are probably AK-47s, and assorted sidearms.”
Botelho frowned. “The shotgun is only semiautomatic,” he admitted.
“Beta, if this man won’t answer my questions, what should I do?”
“As a first recourse, blow Coca-Cola up his nose through a straw. Then ask the questions again.”
Botelho puckered his fat lips and nodded his head slowly, by way of concession. “I think we made a mistake,” he said in an earnest tone. “You are quite right. This software was worth our closest attention. How much do you want for it?”
“I’m not here to sell it!”
“Please, name a reasonable price, and let’s negotiate from there. I’m not just saying that because you have me in this compromising position. I am empowered to arrange a firm agreement on behalf of my company. Let me assure you, I have been considering the various difficulties that you must have encountered in getting yourself here to this interview. I understand now how you were able to slip past my home security. My XCorp division was very foolish in not pursuing the acquisition of this software more aggressively. I’m telling you, we want it, and at any reasonable price.”
Dee gritted her teeth. “Would you shut up! I’m not here to sell it.”
“I think I can say with some confidence that we would also like to hire you away from your current employers, whoever they may be. Shall we say, at double your current salary? You have given me the most effective marketing presentation I have ever witnessed.”
Dee lifted the gun and aimed it at his forehead. This shut him up at last.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” she said coldly. “You know everything about this software. That’s why XCorp paid so much money to have UMBRA come after me. And what has all this got to do with Operation Hydra?”
Botelho opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and looked at her face. He spoke with great caution. “UMBRA? Who . . . is that? And I swear I know nothing of this Operation Hydra.”
“Don’t even try to deny it! I don’t know how you arranged it, but your company has worked with black ops inside the NSA to make my life hell for the past week. You hijacked my plane, and your commandos have chased me all over the world, trying to kidnap or assassinate me, all to get hold of this accursed software.” She found herself blinking through tears of rage. “Which I don’t have anything to do with!”
Botelho seemed to appreciate the intensity of this burst of emotion, and discreetly turned his eyes away from her face. “I am sorry to hear of your misfortunes,” he murmured. “But I must admit to you, at the risk of my own life, I have no idea of these things you speak of. Listen, American woman. It would be very useful if my company really did provide me with assassins and kidnappers and hijackers. The sad truth is that I am not so well staffed. My company is happy to hire accountants and secretaries and engineers to serve my needs, but not commandos. I’m afraid that such services would incur legal fees and government bribes so large, they would soon ruin even a company as big as XCorp.”
Dee looked at him through her hood. “You’re lying,” she said, just to give herself some time to think.
He looked up at her with worried eyes for several seconds. “You’re not going to blow Coca-Cola up my nose, are you?”
Grumbling with frustration, Dee stood up. She happened to notice a light under the door. Someone had turned on the hall light. Her heart pounded, and she felt ill. On the floor was the piece of tape she had placed over Moacir’s mouth earlier. She grabbed it and, pointing the huge gun at his forehead, placed it back over his mouth. Then she lifted the bedcovers and tossed them over his hogtied body. Kneeling beside the bed and holding the gun in both hands, pointed at his face, she whispered, “Don’t make a sound.”
She heard the handle turn, and the door opened. Light from the hall flooded into the room.
“Pai, você está acordado?” a small child’s voice said from the direction of the door.
Moacir’s eyes nearly popped right out of his head. He shook his head, his eyes pleading. Dee raised her finger to her lips. She felt a sudden wave of nausea. This was not at all what she was expecting; though she had no idea what she thought would happen.
Then she heard another hushed voice in the hall: the deep, resonant tones of a grown man. He whispered to the child, and they talked softly. Then the door closed. Dee waited, hoping nobody was in the room. When she felt it was safe, she rolled to her feet and looked around cautiously. They were alone. She breathed a huge sigh of relief.
She looked down at Moacir and whispered, “Are you okay?” He nodded. After demanding his cooperation, Dee removed the tape from his mouth.
“That is my son,” he said quietly. “Please don’t hurt him. I will do anything you ask.”
Dee ignored him and dragged her laptop out of her bag. Taking it over to the small desk beside the bathroom door, she booted up Botelho’s desktop computer, and he willingly helped her log on, get through his firewalls, and find the restricted folders at his office. He rolled his hogtied body over on the big bed, watching the screen as she accessed his darkest professional secrets.
“You know,” he warned her, “these files are too secure to be opened. I myself cannot open them from my home computer.”
She set up an infrared link between his computer and hers.
“Beta.”
“Yes, Melody?”
“Decrypt all the files in this folder. And this one. Let’s do these ones, too.”
“Accessing decryption algorithms. One moment, please.”
As the plain-text versions of the files began to pop up on screen, Dee glanced back over her shoulder. Botelho was watching the converted files appear, with his lips parted and his eyes wide open. “Caramba!” he breathed.
In a cinderblock room the size of a small warehouse, located six floors underground at Fort Meade, Maryland, two young men were working the graveyard shift. Both had crew cuts that exposed a lot of pale skin above their ears, and wore the crisp white shirts and narrow ties of engineers. They were sitting at a pair of desks, each of which had three monitors showing a remarkable array of computer diagnostics. The rest of the room was filled with metal racks ten feet high, crammed with vertical stacks of active computers. Behind the racks, humming metal ducts carried in endless streams of cooled air, and others carried away waste heat. Sandwiched between the ducts were conduits for thick bundles of power cords and high-capacity fiber-optic data cables.
Working the graveyard shift at a data warehouse was about as low-end as a high-tech job could get. But this was a little different. These two young men were paying their dues, and although the work might be boring, they were fulfilling a major public trust. They were monitoring the Black Box Room for the NSA.
They had their backs to each other, and the upper left-hand corner of the central screen on each of their desks contained a window that they had illicitly opened and filled with the graphics screen for BloodSluice, a multi-user fantasy game. They were both deeply involved in trying to kill each other’s characters off, and had been for several hours.
“You sorry sum bitch,” the blond one said in a lazy Alabama accent after the dark-haired one blew off his character’s leg below the knee.
Just then, the left-hand monitor on each of their desks went completely blank, to be filled a moment later with a single window surrounded by a thick red, blinking border.
