BETA - Project Avatar, page 5
“I thought I’d picked up a Russian accent,” she told him. “Or Chechnyan? Czech?”
“No. Americans, all three of them. The accent was a put-on, all part of their cover. They were American intelligence agents.”
“American!” she gasped. “So the whole thing was staged? No, that’s ridiculous. I don’t believe you. Some of them were badly injured.”
“Oh, they took a few knocks all right,” John confirmed. “Your victim, in particular, is now cross eyed and has a knot on his head the size of a squash ball. He won’t be returning to his post as a computer engineer any time soon. And the chap that was wielding the garrote is missing a few teeth. He gave up on the lobster and had an extra bowl of bisque, poor blighter.”
“But UMBRA had staged the whole thing?”
“Oh, no, these three were from some other branch of the service. The leader of the hijacking, the tall blond chap, turns out to be a colonel in the U.S. Army. Holtz is his name.”
“Colonel Holtz,” Dee repeated incredulously.
“Indeed, my impression was they’d gone rogue.”
He wrestled with the wheel as they bumped across the steep canyon floor.
Dee’s head was starting to ache. “But if the hijacking was real, what was the motive? Were they trying to kidnap the general?”
“It’s the most obvious interpretation,” he agreed. “Though it strains the bean to think what they’d want to do with the old windbag.”
“You didn’t ask them?”
He coaxed the buggy around some boulders. “I wasn’t invited there in a speaking capacity,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this: from the bit I saw, they were getting along famously.”
“But still, none of it explains why you were following me.”
“Ah, yes, here’s where it becomes interesting. So there I was, ten or fifteen minutes into the spectacle of this jolly little interrogation, still trying to catch my bearings, as you might imagine. When suddenly, of all things, your name came up.”
“My name!”
“It was in conjunction with your friend Ed. In fact, I had the impression this circle of new chums had been talking about you even before I arrived.”
“What were they saying about Ed and me?” Dee winced as they hit a large bump and she banged her shin bone on the inside of the buggy. She leaned down to rub her leg with her free hand.
“Ah, there we fall upon the hard floor of the matter. As soon as the issue was broached, they put me out.”
“Out of the room?”
“Like a cat with the croup. Shooed me off and locked the door behind me. I admit the affair was none of my business, but the timing of my dismissal still struck me as odd.”
“The whole thing is beyond odd—it’s insane. My friend is lying in a coma, and the . . . the scumball who put him there is eating Lobster Newberg!” She rubbed her temples.
“Quite,” he agreed. “But perhaps you miss my point. Consider. Here they have allowed me access to this strange scenario in which they were making merry with a cadre of renegade agents. So why, I ask, would they let me gaze upon this peculiar vision—and then boot me out because your name came up? That, you see, was when I went looking for you.”
Dee’s forehead was moist now, despite the cool air. If the hijackers were looking for her and had the general’s support, then one thing was clear: she absolutely could not go back.
“But why did you involve yourself?” she said, eyeing him warily. “Now you’re caught up in this thing too.”
He chuckled easily, negotiating his way up a washboard pattern on the arroyo’s floor. “Oh, that’s nothing. Remember, I used to do this for a living. I’ll just drop you off at the old homestead, bid you cheerio and goodnight, and have their vehicle back before they miss it. I’ll pop by and see you tomorrow morning for tea and breakfast. What do you say?”
“If they catch you, they’ll kill you . . . won’t they?”
“Bosh! In the worst case, I’ll have to leg it back to London double-time. A piddling international incident, quickly forgotten.”
She had both hands on her head and was gazing wide-eyed into the jolting darkness around her. None if it added up, but one thing was certain: she would not be going back to her comfortable suite. Her mind flashed to the contents of her weekend bag, now lost forever. She would never again see her strapless brocade dress with the rosette trim. Thank God I didn’t bring my floor-length beaded chiffon, the one with the side slit and the bolero. I would have to go back for that, commandos or not.
Although the buggy still seemed to be on the floor of a canyon or trench, the ground abruptly leveled and smoothed. They were rolling over poured concrete. Overhead, a massive strip of deeper darkness blotted out the stars. They approached it and then rolled straight underneath.
“Where are we?”
“We’re passing under the state highway,” he said. “There’s a big culvert here. Once we’re beyond the highway, we can take to higher ground.”
“I should thank you for everything you’ve done to help me.”
“Always a pleasure to help a damsel in distress,” John assured her.
They came out from under the overpass, and he angled the buggy straight up the concrete skirt forming one side of the culvert. The motor whined as they trundled upward at a slope of perhaps thirty degrees, then bounced over the lip onto a rocky fire road.
She could vaguely make out the stony surroundings, as dead and alien as a landscape on Mars. The road below them was an unlit two-lane strip of blacktop, without a hint of traffic or roadside habitation as far as the eye could see in either direction. They headed away from it, crunching stones under their tires as they struggled up the steep hillside, toward the skyline.
“Now. You can lie low at my cabin while I make inquiries regarding your involvement in this strange affair.”
“I don’t have any involvement,” she reminded him.
“Yes, yes. Of course not. But still, some inquiries are in order.”
“You don’t believe me,” she grumbled.
“Well.” He hesitated and stole a glance at her through the gleaming cyclopean eye strapped to his head. “Obviously, you’re involved somehow. Only the details are unclear. Perhaps a day or two in a quiet space will help you remember something.”
That stopped her. Exactly what sort of quiet space was he referring to—did he mean to lock her up until she revealed what was going on?
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” she said slowly.
“Not at all.”
“John, would you pull over for a moment? I need to powder my nose. Euphemistically speaking.”
“Hang on, we’ll be at the cabin in ten or fifteen minutes.”
“It’s kind of an emergency. In fact, it’s been an emergency for about half an hour.”
He let the buggy coast to a stop and pulled the hand brake. “Let’s be prompt, shall we?”
Clambering awkwardly over the side panel, she slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I’m just going to go a few steps over here,” she said. “Keep talking, so I know where you are.”
“Very well. Er, but what should I say?”
She began stepping down carefully over the lip of the arroyo, hugging her way around a tall column of limestone. “Well . . . how about . . . did you see a lot of combat, when you were in SAS 21?”
“Oh, heavens! ‘Combat’ might be an exaggeration,” he said, his voice coming from somewhere above and behind her. She picked her way among the darkened maze of boulders.
“There were quite a few missions behind enemy lines. And I suppose I do remember a few scrapes we had to shoot our way out of. I recall one little mountain pass in the Hindu Kush—godforsaken spot, bone dry, teaming with guerrillas, don’t you know. All the goats in the region were down with some sort of influenza or something. You’d see whole herds of them dragging their tiny hooves along the mountain trails, sneezing and whatnot. Dreadfully depressing. Well, at any rate, one night . . .”
Dee kept moving, his voice fading behind her. She was following a small game trail that wove steeply downhill through the stony labyrinth. Pausing for just a moment to get her bearings, she surveyed the canyon below and the dark strip of highway running through it. There should be plenty of cover all the way.
She took off down the trail at a trot, praying she didn’t step on a rattlesnake.
Chapter 6
It wasn’t an especially chilly night, but Dee would have dressed differently had she known that the evening’s festivities would include desert escape and evasion. Half an hour after her hike down the canyon trail, she was crouched behind a roadside boulder, studying the occasional vehicle passing by. A Humvee roared past at one point, and she turned away, praying her face hadn’t reflected a headlight beam. A few minutes after her heart finally returned to normal, she began shivering.
“Beta, is there any cell phone service now?” Dee asked, standing up and holding her cell phone above her head.
“Cell phone service is unavailable at this time,” Beta repeated for the fourth time.
She wasn’t surprised that this lonely stretch of road was out of range. The best place to make a call was probably back up the trail she had jogged down just half an hour before. She turned and looked back up the canyon. John was somewhere out there, pottering around in the desert, silent and invisible, looking for her.
After an hour, she had had enough of hunkering in the cold. She was debating whether to come out of hiding when she saw the characteristic tall, square pattern of red and white lights of an approaching tractor-trailer rig. She scrambled out and planted herself on the shoulder of the road. She had never hitchhiked in her life, and the very thought of it gave her the creeps, but she couldn’t stay out in the open desert all night. And come daybreak, she certainly didn’t want to be anywhere near Hotel Uncle Sam. So as the headlights drew near, she waved her arms, and the big rig growled to a halt by the dark roadside some fifty feet from where she stood. Summoning her courage, she darted up the shoulder and climbed in.
She wasn’t surprised when the driver didn’t turn out to be especially pleasant company, but she managed to hold off his persistent personal questioning by being aloof and evasive. Then she threw a couple of non sequiturs into the conversation, to give the impression that she might be a little strange, and that shut him up for a little while.
When the first cluster of lights appeared about twenty miles down the road, she said it was her destination. She jumped out at the only stop sign in a two-street desert town in the middle of nowhere. “I cin drive y’ all the way t’ ’Youston if y’ like. Where y’ goin’?” he yelled through the open cab door as she ducked behind the nearest wooden building. She crouched there until his taillights had disappeared in the distance.
The little town, if you could call it that, looked abandoned. Oh great, I’ve arrived in a ghost town. The only street-front business she could see was a small gas station with three archaic-looking pumps and a minimart advertising beer and ammunition for sale. A big tumbleweed had come to rest against the front wall.
Staying well away from the highway and keeping to the shadows just in case any drunken local denizens were lurking about, Dee fished her smartphone out of her bag and switched on its screen.
“Beta,” she whispered.
“Yes, Dee.”
The image on the bright little LCD screen was nothing like the one she had talked to on the plane. Rather than the earlier generic-looking cartoon of herself, a sophisticated CGI rendition of her face and shoulders looked back at her.
“Beta? How do you . . . I mean, how are you doing that? Why do you look so much like me?”
“Ongoing analysis of bone structure and movement patterns allows adaptive improvements to the wire-frame synthesis,” it told her proudly, speaking in her own voice. The image smiled at her in a reasonably close facsimile of her own smile. Then it puckered its virtual lips and blew a stray strand of virtual hair out of its eyes.
“That’s really weird,” Dee muttered. “I don’t know if I like it. But wait—please don’t go back to the cartoon character. At least, not yet.”
“What can I help you with, Dee?”
“Check my GPS coordinates. What town is this?”
“You’re in Devil Flats, Arizona, sixteen feet southeast of Big Earl’s Gas Mart.”
“Okay, so how do I get out of here?” she said to herself.
“Checking transportation options. One moment please.”
Dee looked at the little image of herself, amazed. What a useful little gadget you’re turning out to be.
“Southwest Intercity Bus has a route with weekly service through Devil Flats.”
“Great,” she said pessimistically. “When’s the next one? Going anywhere.”
“The next southbound bus will arrive Sunday, May 6, at 7:05 a.m., stopping at the corner of Highway 671 and Devil Flats Spur Road.”
She felt a surge of joy. Luck was with her at last. “That’s just a few hours from now!” she exclaimed. “Where does the bus go, Beta?”
“Southwest Intercity Line 17, southbound from Devil Flats, stops at Hog Bristle Gulch, Dry Springs, Horse Skull Hollow . . .”
“Does it go to a city?” she interrupted.
“Final stop is Downtown Bus Terminal, Phoenix, Arizona.”
“Perfect!” Dee had started shivering again and was jiggling up and down on the balls of her feet. “Listen, Beta. Can you tell me if there’s a payphone somewhere in this town?”
“Your location has cell phone connectivity, if you’d like you to place a call.”
“No, don’t place any calls! Stay off the cellular network.”
“Cellular service deactivated,” Beta replied.
She could have kicked herself for not having thought of it earlier—it would be easy enough to trace her location through the cellular phone network.
“I’ve obtained the information you requested. There’s an active payphone on the west wall of Big Earl’s Gas Mart.”
“Good job, Beta! You’re a lifesaver. Now disable the Wi-Fi connection.”
“Wi-Fi network scanning disabled.”
She flicked off the screen display and jogged around the corner of the building, hugging herself and rubbing her shivering arms with both hands.
Sure enough, on the west wall, within the olfactory radius of an untidy men’s room was an antiquated rotary-dial payphone. After calling Abe’s alert number she read the ten-digit number written on the payphone’s dial and added the word “Ghirardelli,” and then she hung up. Abe would know who it was.
She was prepared to wait all night if necessary, but within five minutes the phone rang. Abe’s voice was hoarse, as if he had been dragged out of bed, though it must be late morning in Amsterdam. Not surprisingly, he was loath to converse with her over an unprotected and unfamiliar phone. By way of greeting, he croaked, “Can we use the dead drop?”
“Yes,” she replied.
He hung up without another word.
Though it made no sense, her relief after making this brief contact was palpable. Abe knew next to nothing about UMBRA, but he did have access to a vast network of unexpected resources, and he was peerless at handling discreet communications.
Abe’s dead drop was an encrypted mail cache on a virtual server registered to a Nigerian company. The physical computer was apparently in some basement in rural New Jersey. The company supplying the DSL link thought it was an interactive gaming station at a café in Hoboken. The dead drop allowed members of the Substructure to exchange encoded messages with Abe in absolute security—a claim she knew to be true.
After a little exploration, she found a shed behind Big Earl’s, containing a pair of old mattresses propped against one wall. Groaning at the depths to which circumstances had plunged her, she gave the mattresses a quick sniff test, then spent the last few hours of the night sandwiched between them on the shed floor. She felt herself getting warmer and drowsier. To while away the time, she composed and encrypted a message on her laptop, to be sent to Abe’s dead drop from the first public internet point she encountered.
When the first rays of dawn shined between the slats of the shed wall, she cracked the door, peeked out to make sure the sidewalk was empty, then emerged from her hiding place. After catching a glimpse of her reflection in the shed window, she made an effort to fix her hair and smooth her rumpled clothing, but it didn’t help matters much: she still looked like someone who had slept in a shed.
The sky was fiery-gold and metallic blue in the east, and Big Earl’s Gas Mart was already open. Earl turned out to be not only big but also quite hairy, with a massive beard that looked like a used mop head. He didn’t seem to notice her dishevelment. In fact, from the awestruck way he stared at her over the glass counter, pouring scalding coffee into a Styrofoam cup for her, she might have been an A-list movie star who had just dropped in from Hollywood.
The bus finally arrived at 7:30 a.m., and she climbed aboard, waved good-bye to Earl, and paid cash for her ticket. As she made her way down the aisle to the back of the bus, the six other passengers stared at her with frank country curiosity, their simple faces transparently trying to figure out her story. Good luck, she thought wryly.
She curled up in the rear seat and immediately began spiraling toward sleep. But her drowsy brain had one last piece of business: to figure out where she was going after Phoenix.
There had been plenty of time during the night to reflect on the things John told had her. A lot of it must be true. She was involved in something—deeply, and beginning before she even boarded the jet yesterday. Something was catching up with her. The place to find answers, then, was somewhere in her own past. . . . But where? She had worked five contracts in the past year, seven the year before, and almost any of them could be regarded as dodgy from one point of view or another.
The project in India still had a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends. Had she known how messily it would turn out, she never would have signed on in the first place. Milan had been a little ugly, too.
