Protocol 7 at-1 Read online

  “Hey, stranger.” It was a richly amused female voice just behind his ear.

  Simon turned to see her standing just three feet away, more beautiful than ever.

  Samantha was dressed in a long black overcoat, stylish and striking. Given her reputation, people expected her to be rough around the edges, some sort of outdoorsy tomboy type, but in fact she was the favored daughter of an upscale British family who had been born with an impeccable sense of style. Her makeup was light but perfect; her nails recently done and subtly colored. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a small ponytail that made her high cheekbones and sculpted lips even more pronounced.

  They gave each other a firm, lingering hug, then she pulled Simon across the crowded room to a tiny table she had already claimed as her own. She ordered without asking-she knew what he wanted. She always did.

  “Well,” she said as they settled in. “You look rather awful, don’t you?”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “Oh,” she said, brushing it aside, “it’s the least you deserve.”

  He shook his head, trying his best to play the part of the bewildered, aggrieved best friend. “Sammy, I have no idea what Fae was talking-”

  “Oh, please. We haven’t spoken in days. I know something’s up.”

  Before he could respond, the waitress arrived and slid drinks in front of each of them. “Here’s your Glenn Royale and vermouth,” she said, smiling at them both-and especially at Simon. “A late lunch, then?”

  “No,” Samantha said firmly. “We’re just here to talk. Aren’t we, Simon?”

  Simon nodded, grateful for the interruption. He reached for his wallet, but she put a hand on his arm.

  “Please,” she said. “I insist.”

  He knew better than to argue. He simply took a sip of his scotch and watched her pay for the round as he turned his story over in his head.

  Sitting here, looking at her, he knew that avoidance was pointless. Samantha had a keen sense of always knowing what was wrong with Simon before he ever had a chance to explain. It was true, he sometimes went into his own world and didn’t feel the need to share much of anything with anyone. But Samantha knew that and refused to accept it. She had learned long ago that she could force him to tell her anything she wanted to know and more-even if he wasn’t cooperative, she would simply bully or mislead his friends and even his AIs to get what she wanted.

  Which, I admit, I rather appreciate, he told himself. That’s what best friends are for.

  When it came to Sammy, he realized, honesty wasn’t only the best policy, it was the only choice.

  “Honestly, Sammy,” he said, “I don’t know where to begin.”

  She took a sip of her drink and looked at him for a moment from under her long lashes. “It’s okay, Fitzpatrick,” she said, smiling. “Just start at the top.”

  He cleared his throat and did exactly that, beginning with the moment that Jonathan Weiss showed up at the door with a message from his father. As he spoke, slowly and deliberately, the crowd around them grew even larger and louder, and Samantha had to move closer to him just to hear him clearly. Simon didn’t mind that a bit.

  They’d become so engrossed with each other that neither of them noticed the stranger sitting in a far corner of the Stanton. The man watched them steadily, unmoved by the noise and the shifting crowd. He was much too far away to hear a single word, but his eyes remained focused on their faces-and especially their lips.

  Simon’s story went on for more than an hour. The stranger watched as Samantha reacted with surprise, then shock. As she placed her drink on the table and put both hands to her mouth in surprise and fascination, the stranger knew: his mission had to be completed tonight.

  Much later, as the late afternoon crowd began to thin, the stranger in a tailored grey overcoat made his way across the room. Simon was still talking, and Samantha was so absorbed she didn’t even look up as the man passed by their table and left the pub.

  A few minutes later Simon tipped up his glass and drained the last of his melted ice with a hint of scotch in it. He sighed deeply, relieved and concerned at the same time, and looked around the room. He had to smile. The place was nearly empty. “Wow. The dinner rush will be starting any time, and I have another engagement this evening.”

  “We have another engagement this evening, you mean.”

  Simon sighed. “Sammy, I-”

  “I thought we had settled this, Simon. I’m coming. It’s settled.”

  He thought about arguing with her. And he knew how pointless it would be.

  He nodded. “All right then. Andrew and I will swing by and pick you up.”

  “Good.”

  “…But maybe we should be heading out.”

  Samantha didn’t respond. She was staring into the distance, clearly stunned by all he had told her. Suddenly her eyes snapped to his, focusing sharply.

  “What do you need from me?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Please.” He had told her everything-more than he had intended-but he was not about to invite her along.

  She sat back in her chair and looked up toward the ceiling thinking deeply. The waitress came by again with a contrived smile.

  “We about ready to square up on the second round, then?”

  Samantha almost jumped, as if she was surprised at the young woman’s presence. “Oh. Of course.” He stood and begrudgingly let Samantha pay the bill, then helped her with her coat. The scent of her perfume was even stronger as she came close to him.

  I can’t put her in danger, he told himself, glad that he had avoided telling her the details of his plan. I just can’t. He reached for the door to the street, but Samantha put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Simon.”

  Something in her voice made him turn to her. Her amazing eyes looked directly into his. “Simon, you know I would do anything.”

  He forced a comforting smile. “I know, Sam. But…I don’t want you to get into a situation that you can’t pull out of-that no one can pull you out of.”

  She nodded, seeming to understand, and they moved into the chilly London evening.

  A cab was waiting just down the street in one direction; Sam’s flat was a short walk the opposite way. She gave him a brief, almost distracted hug and a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll talk later, young man,” she said with mock severity. “And I am going to Ryan’s.” He started to object, but she put up a hand, having none of it. “No. I’m going. End of story.”

  Simon shrugged and surrendered. He would have to find some kind of home-front role for her, something to keep her involved but out of danger. “All right,” he said.

  She turned and strolled up the street toward her flat. Simon watched her for a moment, thoughts whirling, then turned and ducked into the cab.

  The stranger watched them part from a full block away. He saw it all on a simple handheld device that viewed the scene from above, an amalgam of images from CCTV, private cams, and eyes-down satellites that only he and his superior could access. He saw them part in crisp, clear images, unobstructed by clouds or shadows. A touch of the controls, and he continued to follow Samantha, allowing Simon to climb into his taxi and disappear from view…for the moment.

  The special communicator implanted in the canal of his left ear murmured to life. He heard a voice-the voice of his superior, the voice he never wanted to hear-speaking clearly and calmly.

  Three short sentences; three simple commands. And then the voice was gone.

  The stranger nodded his head. It was all very clear. He needed to retrieve enough information to plant the asset precisely at the right place and at the right time with the team’s journey.

  There was work to be done.

  A ROOM

  5,732 Feet Below the Surface

  The room was too bright.

  The man on the table could see nothing but light, could feel nothing but pain. The person standing over him had turned away for a moment, whispering to himself, touching his ear
…but now he turned back and leaned forward.

  “What do you know about the Nest?” He asked. “What are you not telling me?”

  The man on the table said nothing. The standing man made a harsh, frustrated sound-almost a growl.

  “Tell me,” he ordered. “Tell me everything.”

  “No.”

  The man standing above him clutched at his throat. His fingers tightened. His lips were only an inch from the man’s ear. “Tell. Me. Everything.”

  The man on the table gulped in one more breath and said the only thing he could.

  “Never.”

  The man standing above him squeezed.

  The pain suddenly became brighter than the light.

  OXFORD, ENGLAND

  Outside Simon's Flat

  Simon never even made it inside his flat.

  The cab dropped him at the curb just a few feet from the front entrance. He was raising his hand to cue the biometric lock when the waist-high hedge to his left suddenly trembled and hissed at him.

  “SSSimon!”

  He stopped short and turned, surprised. Without thinking, his body fell into a natural defensive posture: hands up, fingers half-curled into fists, one foot in front of the other, knees slightly bent. All those years of martial arts training instinctively took control of his body. He was ready to defend himself.

  A shadow rose up from behind the hedge: slender and tall, narrow build, a fall of silver hair like wings on both sides of his face.

  It was Hayden, wide-eyed and intense.

  “Hayden!” Simon whispered fiercely. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Come with me,” he said softly. “We need to take a drive.”

  “You’re drunk!”

  Hayden cocked his head as if he was truly puzzled. “And your point is…?”

  “I’m not going anywhere if you’re driving,” Simon told him.

  Hayden spread his hands innocently. “Then you drive. I don’t give a rip. We just have to go.”

  Simon thought about it for a second. He only had a couple of hours before he had to go to Ryan’s, and the long talk with Samantha had been exhausting. But…if Hayden wanted him, there was a good reason for it. He agreed.

  He dropped his head in surrender. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s drive.”

  Hayden’s odd little electrical car was parked unevenly at the curb, halfway down the block. Simon was unfamiliar with the controls, but it didn’t take long to adjust. Three minutes later they were slipping into traffic with much larger vehicles, but the Hayden-mobile zipped and maneuvered more like a sports car than a commuter-box.

  Simon was astonished: the two-seater had incredible pick-up; it was almost like driving a turbo-charged internal combustion engine from the last century.

  “You’ve messed around with this, haven’t you?” he said as they sailed down the highway, barely in control.

  “Maybe a little,” Hayden said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Turn right here, please.”

  “Here?”

  “HERE!”

  He dragged at the wheel and tilted into a hard right turn. The tires squealed at the strain.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  “To a suburb in the north part of town,” he said. “Turn left at the next light.”

  “Why-”

  “I need to show you something, Simon. I’m not going to talk about it ‘til we get there, so just, for the love of Christ, drive, will you?” He took a pull at the bottle he had left on the floor of the front seat. “My god, I’m amazed I even made it to your flat in my condition.”

  “Then stop drinking, Hayden!”

  The older man goggled at him. “Damn, you are an old woman, aren’t you?” he said and took another swig.

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled to the curb at a quiet lit corner in an anonymous suburban district. There was a fueling station on one corner, offering the usual array of hydrogen, electrical hookups, biofuels and even some hideously expensive fossil fuel. Across the narrow side street was a small tea shop and chemists, one of the vanishing breed of family-owned neighborhood everything-stores that used to fill the English countryside. And caddy-corner, near a small park, was an abandoned entrance to the underground. A lopsided gate, somewhat the worse for wear, blocked the grimy staircase that led down into the shadows. The mangled sign dangling from it read, “OPEN FOR CONNECTIONS, MARCH 2036.” Three years late, Simon thought. Just a bit behind schedule.

  Hayden rolled out of the car almost before Simon had pulled to a complete stop; it was all the younger man could do to park and run after him. “Hey!” he called, still pitching his voice low. “Will you wait, please?” Hayden was heading somewhat unsteadily to the underground entrance. He passed the sign that named the station, but Simon couldn’t read it; it was completely covered with graffiti.

  As he stumbled to the gate, Hayden pulled a huge rusted key from his pocket. It looked a hundred years old to Simon, at the very least, and it took more than a moment of twiddling and cursing for Hayden to fit it into the massive padlock on the entry gates and pop the lock open.

  Hayden shoved the gate wide-open and bolted inside. He gestured for Simon to follow as he dashed down the steps of the old subway. There was a gate at the bottom as well; it took Hayden even less time to produce a different key and open another set of locks.

  Simon closed the outer gate behind them and dashed down the stairs to join his father’s old friend…but he skidded to a halt beside him as Hayden pushed the inner gate open with a theatrical squawk. It was dead black inside; the lights had been turned off long ago.

  Hayden turned to peer back up the steps, making sure no one was following. Simon could smell the stench of the street bums that lived in the area, but none were in sight. It was hard to see anything in the gloom.

  “Hayden,” he said, “This is-”

  There was a burst of blinding white light, strong and sudden enough to make Simon lurch back. Hayden turned to him and waved a powerful flashlight in his face. “Always prepared,” he said.

  He turned and dove into the darkness. Scowling, and against his better judgment, Simon followed.

  They trotted down a second series of steps, moving even deeper into the underground. There was a strangely linear gleaming light below and in front of them; it took Simon a moment to understand what he was looking at: the subway tracks, still clean and shining despite years of disuse.

  “Hayden, where the hell are we going?”

  This time Hayden didn’t look back. “Just follow, Simon.” As they trotted through the darkness, Simon noticed sections of the track had been disassembled. They were obviously in some long-abandoned section of the tubes, far from any working lines.

  Hayden abruptly stopped, so fast that Simon almost crashed into his back. But he pulled up short as Hayden spun and shined the light directly into his face.

  “Simon, you and I have never been here.”

  He turned to the left and walked through a side tunnel that opened into what appeared to be a utility room. At the far end of the room was another door with yet another lock.

  “Where did you get all these keys?”

  “Where did you get all those questions?” Hayden muttered as if talking to Teah and pushed the third key into the third lock and turned it. He pulled the door open…only to reveal another door directly behind it. But this one was different than the others. It was newer, cleaner, and there was the dimly glowing box of a biometric sensor cut into it, almost like a small MRI with a three-dimensional scanner. It was so clean and new it seemed entirely out of place in the murk of the abandoned room.

  Hayden placed his hand inside the device with an oddly casual air, as if he had done it a thousand times before. Simon saw a blue light flow out of the device as it read the entire form of the scientist’s hand.

  It took only moments. The light flashed blue and then green, then the door popped open with a mechanical chunk. Hayden pushed through, gesturing for Simon to follow. “S
tay close,” he said.

  Simon could feel his heart pounding. They were in a short, dark corridor that led to one more door-this one with no lock at all.

  “Where the hell are we?” he said again.

  “It’s an entrance. A secret entrance, really. The fact is, there are much easier ways to get here, but this is the only one without cameras.” He belched quietly into his fist. “I think.”

  “Hayden, what the hell are you talking about?”

  The scientist looked him up and down as if he was making some kind of final decision. After a moment he nodded his head and pushed open the far door.

  Simon took one step inside and stopped in astonishment.

  The space was as big as a football field and taller than a four-story building. The ceiling was curved into a high dome, buttressed by arcs of dull gray material that looked like steel and plastic at the same time. The floor was concrete, but the vehicles and devices that filled it-cranes, haulers, transformers, and machines he couldn’t begin to understand nearly filled the space.

  Above him, suspended from the domed ceiling, were three huge cradles. One cradle was empty; the other two filled, at least in part, with unfinished technology-a vehicle, Simon thought, and one that looked strangely familiar. Cables and scaffolding connected the two constructs; robots rode the cables and flitted through the air between them, in the midst of completing some impossibly complex assignment.

  “This…this…”

  “This is what I like to call the Spector safe house,” Hayden said with ill-conceived pride. “I invented it.”

  Simon tore his eyes away from the panorama to look at his father’s close friend. “Spector,” he said. “The experimental submersibles. But I thought-you told me the project wasn’t even half-finished.”

  “Oh, come along, Simon,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for more than twelve years. I’m the recipient of a Nobel Prize, I’ve received the Renssaelaer Award twice now, and I’m a Fellow at the most prestigious robotics college in Europe. Surely you don’t think I’ve gotten this far by lying around waiting, do you?”