Protocol 7 at-1 Page 17

  It was the image of a fifty-year-old cargo ship, a large one, seen from a thousand feet or more in the air. The vessel was obviously under power, cutting through a moderately choppy sea at a considerable speed. White foam churned along its prow; a wake peeled off its stern in a long, narrow “V.”

  “Behold,” Andrew said, barely glancing up from his display. “The S.S. Munro, cruising near the Southern Sea, under the command of one Dominic Donovan, carrying the Spector I to its unknown test site.”

  “Unknown,” Simon muttered, “until now.”

  “Right,” Andrew said. “Because now it’s ours.”

  Hayden paced behind him nervously, trying to contain himself. “Not yet, it’s not,” Hayden said. “And it won’t be if you don’t move. Are you getting any juice to those modules yet?”

  Andrew turned to him, his usual disposition buried in tension. “If we’re going to do this correctly,” he said between clenched teeth, “you’re going to have to give me a few minutes. I need a little time to catch the proper algorithms. You know better than I do that we’ve only got one chance…Professor.”

  Hayden shook his head in disgust and turned away to pace the room again.

  Simon moved closer to Samantha, who was watching them work with large unblinking eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Is it working?”

  “It comes in two steps,” he said very quietly, careful not to disturb them. “First: commandeer one or more satellites to locate the Munro. Find the ship, find its data stream. And Andrew’s already done that.” He nodded at the aerial shot of the ship as it surged through the water. “That image is coming from the STS-192, an environmental survey bird orbiting at twenty-seven thousand feet, now completely under Andrew’s control.”

  “Not quite,” Andrew said. “Got the satellite, found the ship, but getting that datastream…still working on that.”

  Samantha looked from the screen to Andrew to the screen again. “My god,” she said.

  “Step two,” Simon continued, “is the hard part. Now that we have located the ship, Ryan has to decrypt the data it’s sending and receiving, match the algorithms it’s exchanging with the military, and replace it with our own datastream to take control of the ship.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Theoretically, yes. He’s the world’s leading expert on this process; it’s called Remote Access Intervention.”

  “But I’m not going to be able to do it at all,” Ryan said acidly, without looking up, “if the two of you don’t stop disturbing me.”

  “Sorry.” Simon clamped his mouth shut, and Samantha shrank even deeper into the overstuffed chair.

  After a moment, Simon put a hand out and touched her on the wrist. “Come on,” he whispered as quietly as he could. “Come help me in the kitchen.”

  “All right.” She carefully placed her glass of wine on the side table and followed him toward the basement kitchen.

  He didn’t really want to talk-not yet. He simply wanted to draw her away from the mounting tension in the great room and get a sense of how well she was holding up.

  She seemed appreciative as they walked downstairs and entered the underground kitchen.

  “Do you want to check the freezer for smoked fish?” he asked casually as he walked into the pantry. He already knew what the latter contained; it hadn’t changed a bit since his childhood days. Oliver had always had a deep love affair with French cheeses of every kind; he stocked them in abundance, along with everything else he thought might go well with them: smoked fish, fruits, fresh vegetables, and wine. None of it had appealed to him as a child, but now he was rather relieved to see all of that and more on the meticulously maintained shelves.

  Searching through the pantry, he almost smiled at the thought of how age had changed him. Over the years, he had grown to appreciate what his father had loved, and he was pleased to see that Leon had continued to satisfy Oliver’s habits.

  Beyond the pantry was a large room built specifically to house an extensive wine collection. It was also packed with shelves of preserves, some of which looked questionable. He randomly grabbed several items from the shelves as he heard Samantha’s voice: “You’ve got your pick.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, walking out with several jars and a large block of cheese.

  Samantha was peering into the walk-in freezer, looking curious. “What has he got in there?” he asked.

  She pulled out a long, thin platter and showed him a beautifully filleted salmon, fresh and pink. Clearly Leon had been busy. “Let’s see what we can do with this,” she said.

  As they started to assemble a quick dinner for the team, they heard Ryan’s voice from upstairs. “Synchronizing!” he shouted.

  Turning to Samantha with a desperate look, Simon asked, “You’ve got this?”

  “Sure. See what’s going on. I’ll take care of it.”

  Before he had reached the steps to go upstairs, he heard Andrew’s response to Ryan. “Give me a couple of minutes. I’m almost there.”

  Simon re-entered the great hall to find Hayden hovering over Ryan, more intense than ever. “You’ve got to make sure the algorithms are in sync,” he said. “Otherwise the communication will shut down.”

  “I’ve got it,” Andrew said, carefully holding his finger above one of the little buttons, trying to synchronize the time to push the appropriate button on the device.

  Andrew looked up at the flat screen, staring at the Munro as it cut through the open sea. “Almost there,” he said to himself, not daring to smile.

  Simon’s gut sank, realizing they were about to hijack a secret multi-million-dollar government vehicle from the British military. There was no way to stop now, no way to turn back. They had gone too deep and were already in grave danger.

  There would be no solace for the team. From this point forward they were committed. And once the British military found out, they would be on their tail without pause and forever.

  All three men watched Andrew as his finger rested on the button of the small device he had rigged to the stolen modules. The room fell absolutely silent except for the crackling noise of the wood burning in the fireplace and the random clatter from the basement kitchen. They watched Andrew, anxiously waiting to see when he would connect to the vessel.

  For the first time, he noticed a thick bar at the top of the flat screen display. Half of it was red; near the middle of the screen it turned blue. As he watched it, the red portion grew a bit, consuming a fraction more of the blue. It looked exactly like an old-fashioned download indicator, the kind he’d seen on the very first computer he’d ever owned.

  Ryan risked a glance at him and saw what he was looking at. “That’s the turnover indicator,” he said. “I invented it myself. As soon as it’s all red, we’ll have fully synced the algorithms…and the ship will be ours to take.”

  “Thirty seconds to completion,” Andrew said in a low voice.

  Simon understood what they were saying. Once the algorithms were fully integrated, the information they would be sending could not be traced; the Munro would recognize Andrew’s instructions as if they were genuine commands sent by the military. They could turn the ship, stop it, send it to wherever they wanted, and no one on the vessel-not the navigator, not the Captain, not even the on-board AIs-would think to question the commands.

  Four men, sitting in a cottage in Corsica, using twenty-year-old contraband equipment, were about to take control of a top-secret military operation without anyone’s knowledge.

  The red bar grew longer and longer, and then the last of the blue blinked away.

  The S.S. Munro-and the Spector I that slept in its hull-was theirs.

  They all stood speechless for a second, trying to take in the reality of the moment. Simon finally broke the silence. “As my father used to say, ‘Dis-information is power.’”

  Hayden looked at him with a serious expression and then slowly nodded as he frowned. “It’s the truth,” he said. “Back in the beginning, thirt
y years ago or more, we called this ‘The Information Age.’ But it’s not. Never was. We learned damn quickly that just having all that information didn’t mean a thing. We learned that it’s not what we know; it’s what we believe. Your dad was right: dis-information is power. Change the reality and you change the outcome. Controlling destiny.”

  Ryan looked up at them with a new kind of horror and elation in his eyes-like a child who had just done something without understanding its consequence.

  “Control your destiny,” he echoed.

  “Wow,” said Andrew, taking a deep breath. He too was just beginning to realize what they had done.

  The window of opportunity had been locked open.

  They were on their way.

  * * *

  Simon cleared his throat abruptly. “Let it sit for a while,” he said. “Let’s make sure we’re a hundred percent.”

  The others looked at each other, then looked back at him.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said soothingly. “Let’s have dinner, then we can send the new coordinates to the ship.”

  Ryan inhaled deeply and placed both hands behind his head. He looked pale and shaky, as if he hadn’t taken a breath in an hour.

  “Good idea,” Andrew replied, wiping sweat from his forehead. He stood up as Samantha walked into the room, trying to balance several large platters of food.

  “Let me help you there,” Simon said with a smile. “It’s been a while since you had to pull off the two-armed double truck.”

  She almost laughed. Simon was teasing her about her short-lived job as a waitress-the only gig she could get back in college to pay for her tuition. It was a mandate of her parents that she learned the hard way, even though they could easily have helped her. It was a disaster and they both knew it. “You know,” she said, “the same bastard may have fired me three times, but at least I learned how to do this. It’s second nature to m-oops!”

  Simon dove to catch one plate as it slid from her forearm. He got a hand under it just before it hit the Armenian rug. They all laughed-all of them, even Sam-and the tension that had filled the room for an hour suddenly burst like a bubble.

  They were careful to put the food at the far end of the table, well away from the computer modules and the flat screen. And for the next twenty minutes, the old friends shared a meal and a bottle of wine and tried to forget that they had just changed their destiny.

  * * *

  Hayden didn’t talk very much during the brief meal, far less than the younger people at the table. He was in no mood for small talk. He finished quickly and excused himself with a grunt, then moved away from the table to the warmth of the fireplace at the far end of the room where he could gaze uninterrupted into the flames and just think.

  Deep down inside, Hayden knew the truth. No matter how hard they tried, no matter how clever they were, they would eventually be discovered. And deep down inside, at least it didn’t matter-not to him.

  His life was over.

  Two decades of scientific research flashed before his eyes. Tonight, his career as a scientist had taken a turn that he hadn’t expected-one he thought never would, no matter what his mad dreams might have been. Whatever he had been before was finished now. The technology he needed, the funding necessary for his level of dedication…no one would ever give it to him, ever again.

  He suddenly felt very old, and at the same time brand new.

  There was a burst of laughter from the table behind him. He hunched his shoulders as it sent a chill down his spine. The others were famished from their traveling, relieved and exhilarated by their easy success. But the journey ahead would be extreme and challenging for all of them, and it was quite possible that they wouldn’t have another moment like this together in the coming weeks. He was glad they could have this, at least. He wished he could share it.

  He stared into the fire. It had dwindled to a few pieces of glowing orange wood. I would have thought Leon would have kept a better eye on this, he thought absently. After all…

  Hayden suddenly looked up, looked around, thought back.

  “Simon,” he said, breaking through the easy conversation. “Where’s Leon?”

  * * *

  Something twisted in Simon’s stomach. He stood up from the table a little too fast and said, “You’re right. Where the hell is he?”

  He turned and almost ran from the room. The others sat very quietly now, listening to Simon move swiftly from room to room, calling the caretaker’s name.

  “Leon! Leon!”

  There was no answer, and no halt to the search.

  “Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” Andrew said. “Not good at all.”

  Samantha heard a door slam, then saw a flash of movement beyond the great room’s windows. She stood up and peered out, into the night.

  “Look,” she said. The others joined her at the window, just in time to see Simon disappear into the darkness, still calling Leon’s name, then reappear almost immediately, grim-faced as ever.

  A moment later he was back in the great room. He turned to Hayden and said darkly, “I might be a while. Help them set the rendezvous coordinates for the Munro and then everyone- all of you-try to get some rest. We have to be down by the dock before five a.m.”

  Ryan looked at his watch. It was half past one. He rushed over to the digital display and began to monitor the Munro’s activities halfway around the globe.

  Simon left without another word. There was only one more place to look-the one place he had been thinking about and avoiding since the moment they’d set foot on Corsica.

  Oliver’s private study.

  He began to climb the stairs to the second floor as quickly as he could. Then, unaccountably, he found himself slowing, moving just as he had as a child, almost tip-toeing to the upper landing, creeping down the hall, and pausing before the study doors, his eyes locked on them, his heart pounding.

  They were stout double doors made from oak, thick and lovingly crafted. The knobs were huge and ancient; the brass locking plate below polished and free of the slightest fingerprint.

  An envelope was pinned to the center of both doors. Even from a distance, Simon could see what it displayed.

  After ascending a few more steps closer to the door, eyes locked on the envelope, he recognized it. It was an unusual geometric symbol he had seen before. It looked like some sort of insignia.

  He had not seen it in years. When he first noticed the geometric symbol at eight years of age, it was on Oliver’s briefcase. He had asked his father what it was, but had only gotten a vague response. For years it had remained in the vast pages of his childhood’s unresolved memories.

  He felt something cold and hard sink in his stomach as he slowly approached the door. Each step felt like a dream as fear began to grip his body. Even his own legs seemed to weigh him down as he inched closer to the door. Simon, stop the paranoia, he told himself as he covered the last few steps. It’s time. It has to be time.

  The wooden floor beneath his feet announced his approach with each new creak. For a moment-just for a moment! — he was absolutely positive his father was waiting on the other side of those doors, that he would open them and find Oliver Fitzpatrick sitting behind his massive oak desk, grinning and congratulating him on a job well done.

  But that’s a lie, he told himself. He wanted it so badly to be true, but it wasn’t. His father was thousands of miles away, trapped in the loneliest continent on Earth. His father was waiting for him there, he knew-counting on him.

  He stopped two feet from the double doors and gazed at the brass knobs…and saw, to his amazement, a small key inserted into the right lock-a key bearing the same insignia as the envelope he had not yet taken as his own. His heart started pounding. That key was never there before. That key granted him the access he needed. That key could open the doors to a secret fragment of his childhood that had haunted him for years.

  He reached out and touched it, his stomach cramping with tension. He closed his eyes and knew the
unknown world he longed to discover was only inches away.

  Then, instantly as if controlled by some outside force, he opened his eyes and found himself staring at the note pinned in front of him, between both doors. He paused, staring, almost hypnotized.

  Then he let go of the key and reached for the envelope, tearing it free of the two pins that had pushed it deep into the wood. He ripped open the envelope even as he heard Hayden’s voice from downstairs: “Rendezvous coordinates laid in. We’re good to go.”

  The note was written with an unfamiliar hand and obviously in some haste. The work was messy; the lines a bit crooked. But none of that mattered. He read:

  This door leads to more than you are ready to embrace. Oliver knew this and kept it from you. He knew you would enter when you were ready, but that time is not tonight.

  Things reveal themselves to us when we are destined to see them, and not before. Inside those doors you will not find what you are looking for. If you must enter, then that is what fate has written for us all. But I will not be here to witness it.

  I leave you with this choice, Simon. The key is in your hand.

  Farewell,

  Leon

  Simon was speechless. He stood in front of the door to his father’s study and looked back at the tiny brass key inserted into the lock. He dropped his head and closed his eyes as he thought of Leon’s words.

  Simon wanted more than anything to enter that room. More than anything. He touched the knob again, thinking with all his might, trying to understand his father and his fate as he never had before. He gripped the key, crushing it between his fingers.

  Then, he released it and looked at the note one more time. He folded the note, and was ready to put it into his jacket when he caught a glimpse of something written on the back of the notepaper.

  His heart raced. He held it up, turned it in the light, and saw three lines written in Leon’s hasty, crooked hand:

  — 73 degrees South

  — 82 degrees West

  — 10,022 feet