A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

  A pained look crossed Ben’s face. “The agent that went missing last night, Thomas Fry, is what we call a ghost. He doesn’t actually exist. Or rather,” he quickly amended, “he does exist, but that’s not his real name. The problem with having a national database of our citizenry is that it’s relatively easy to forge records. All it takes is a name and date of birth. If a person—or a subversive group of persons—knows how to submit the information through the right channels, they could potentially create any number of false records.”

  “To use as aliases?” asked Emily. She wasn’t comfortable talking about Altair, but at least he was trying to be discrete this time around.

  Ben laughed cynically. “It’s so much more than an alias. The false record is like a new life. The really well done forgeries come with medical histories, school transcripts, immunization records, you name it. They have national ID numbers, and some even have a sub-dermal tracking chip attached to the file. It’s next to impossible to tell the difference between a real record and a forged one. It’s the reason we need a mandatory national DNA database, but every time the issue is broached in Washington, you get protests about invasion of privacy. The international community in particular lobbies heavily against it.”

  “So how do you know the agent from last night was a ghost?” Emily asked. “I mean, if the forgeries are so good, how do you know?”

  He shook his head ruefully. “There are two national databases: one for the living population, and one for the dead. Last night, someone—presumably the impostor himself—entered a death date for Thomas Fry of Phoenix, Arizona into the GCA system. That immediately transferred his personnel record into that secondary database. Once there, it was scrubbed clean of all vital statistics, including fingerprint and DNA records. That used to be the common procedure that Altair used whenever one of their ghosts was no longer useful. It hasn’t happened in quite a few years, because our system was supposed to be foolproof against that sort of tampering. Apparently someone got their hands on some necessary passwords. They cleaned up their tracks nicely, too. Basically, all we have left of him is his co-workers’ memories and a fake death record.”

  “What about his family, his home?”

  “No family,” Ben said, “and his apartment conveniently caught fire last night at roughly the same time we were besieging that warehouse. Oh, this was a systematic operation on their part—they played us like a violin, and we never saw it coming.”

  “So they had this ghost waiting to help the Wests escape?” Oliver asked. “Exactly how long was that guy with the GCA? Two weeks?”

  “Thirteen years,” said Ben flatly. “He was a spy embedded deep in his enemy’s camp. You’ve got to give them credit for patience, at least. We should’ve known they would try to use our efforts to reach out to the Wests, though. It’s not like they could approach them any easier than we can.”

  Bitterness was thick on his voice. Not only did he have to deal with the chaotic aftermath, but he was also an information junkie. It probably killed him that something like this had slipped in under his radar.

  “So you won’t be needing Oliver today?” Emily guessed.

  That at least got him to laugh, short though the sound was. “Not unless the Wests go walking in broad daylight, waving a white flag to draw attention to themselves. Right now we’re trying to tap into Altair’s channels of communication. If they haven’t already talked to the Wests, they will soon, but they don’t like dealing with hot property, so to speak. They’ll want to smuggle them out of the country as soon as possible.”

  “How do you know?” asked Oliver.

  “Because that’s what they did with their parents,” said Ben. “At least, that’s what our sources say they did. Oh, did you not know that Mama and Papa West turned to Altair for their disappearing act? That’s all the more reason to keep the four kids from escaping. Now, if I’ve spent sufficient time explaining the situation, you’d probably better make an escape of your own, back upstairs. I’m off to get yelled at again.”

  Emily and Oliver watched him leave before exchanging a wary look. “I guess we should probably go back upstairs,” said Emily.

  “How hard do you think it would be to hack the lock on the computer lab up there?” Oliver asked. “Hypothetically speaking, I mean.”

  “Hypothetically speaking, I’m pretty sure your handler would wring your scrawny neck if you tried. What do you want with a computer lab, anyway?”

  “I want to see what’s going on. You can’t sit there and pretend you’re not curious.”

  Emily leaned close, her voice cutting to a desperate whisper. “Do you not remember spending three weeks in confinement just because we heard the name Altair mentioned? It’s only been a week since we got out, and we’ve been sucked even deeper into the same quagmire. I don’t want to go back to a confinement cell.”

  He considered her words and seemed to concede her point. She wanted verbal confirmation, though.

  “No hacking computer lab locks,” she said sternly as they crossed the hall to the elevators.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Oliver. “I got it.”

  Even though his reassurance was half-hearted at best, Emily had every intention of bolting straight for her room and leaving him to his own devices. It was Sunday, she was tired, and she didn’t feel like watching a ten-year-old just to make sure he didn’t do anything rash. She would retreat to her room, shut the door, and pretend that everything was fine. Crystal would be so proud, she thought wryly.

  When the elevator opened to the fifth floor, though, she was met with a new road block—two road blocks, actually. Quincy and Alyson stood in front of the doors. Quincy’s face was set hard with determination while Alyson fidgeted nervously.

  “Is something wrong?” Emily asked, against her better judgment.

  “Oh, um…” Alyson hemmed.

  “I’m going to ask Birchard when they’re sending us home,” said Quincy. “I’m sick of being here. I don’t want to do this. I’m going back to Prom-F.”

  “What brought this on?” Emily asked Alyson. Quincy answered, just as Emily intended.

  “Seeing my friend and his brother cornered like animals brought this on,” she said with an angry flash. “Watching Oliver get knocked out with a tranquilizer dart brought this on. Sitting here twiddling my thumbs while a bunch of morons in suits decide my fate brought this on. Prom-F is no picnic, but at least it’s a slow poison, not a volatile one like this!”

  She started to shove past them onto the elevator, but Oliver blocked her path. “You don’t want to go down there right now. General Stone’s on the warpath. He’ll chew you up and spit you out again.”

  “The worst he can do is transfer me to Prom-E five years early,” Quincy retorted. “I’m going to end up there anyway, so who cares? We both are.”

  “Prom-E is apocryphal at best,” Oliver said. “And who says we’re both going to end up there?”

  She shoved his shoulders. “Open your eyes, Oliver! That’s where all null-projectors end up! Come on, Alyson.” She pushed her way past into the elevator.

  Alyson managed a simpering smile toward Emily as she slipped by. Within the elevator, Quincy pushed the second-floor button impatiently. The doors slid shut.

  “She’s cracked,” said Oliver.

  Emily was inclined to agree, but she said curiously, “I wonder if that’s where Veronica’s null-projector ended up.”

  Oliver’s attention snapped to her face. “Don’t speculate like that. There’s no point.”

  Then, he swept past her to his room. At least he wasn’t completely discounting the existence of Prom-E anymore. He hadn’t even bothered to call her an idiot for her speculation, either.

  “What a strange day,” said Emily to the ceiling, and she made a beeline for her own door.

  XXIII

  Altair Is Here

  August 4, 10:35am mst, Phoenix

  Sunday had proven to be a terrible day not to have a safe hiding place. Sleeping out in
the open at night wasn’t so bad, but the day had turned sweltering. The Wests spent it skulking from one back yard to the next, trying not to be seen by homeowners as they went. It was the one day of the week that people didn’t have work or school to attend. Many braved the blistering heat to mow lawns or trim trees, which made the Wests’ task of hiding that much more difficult.

  Thus, when the Monday morning sun broke along the horizon, they were supremely grateful for a world returning to its weekly routine. A world in routine allowed them to move more freely about their own business.

  They needed a library, and the easiest place for a group of kids to access one without drawing too much attention was at a school. Luckily, the area they were in had a couple of elementary schools. They chose the closer one to infiltrate.

  “Are you going to blend in well enough?” Hawk asked dubiously. The students here wore uniforms of white collared shirts and dark slacks.

  “Our Prometheus duds should work,” Hummer said as he dug through his backpack. “I hoped I’d never have to wear it again, but it’s a close enough match, once you get rid of the tie and the coat and the sweater vest.”

  “You got rid of those back in California,” Honey reminded him. “You’d have burned the whole thing if you didn’t need an extra set of clothes.”

  “Guilty as charged.” He favored her with a cheeky grin and whipped a wrinkled white shirt from the bottom of his bag.

  She rolled her eyes and disappeared into the bushes to change. “Happy, you’re going to be good for Hawk, aren’t you?” she called. “We shouldn’t be gone more than ten or fifteen minutes. We know exactly what we’re looking for.”

  Happy didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned his gaze on Hawk. “Where’s Revere?” he asked quietly.

  Hawk pointed up. “Playing lookout.” The raven had recovered admirably from his adventure with the tranquilizer-free dart. He occasionally chattered to Hawk about soreness at the joint where the needle had struck him, but it had not debilitated him much, if at all, and he stubbornly refused to leave the four children.

  They were currently positioned in the shrubbery of a side-yard across from the school. Children infested the playground, shrieking and running as they spent their pent-up energy on their morning recess.

  “You two better hurry,” said Hawk. “They’re going to ring the bell soon.”

  Hummer stripped his old shirt to replace it with the new one. He’d already been wearing the dusty, dirt-stained pants. His final ensemble made him look like a disheveled mess. “How is it?” he asked.

  “You’ll fit right in,” Hawk said. Across the street, several children tackled each other in the sandbox while apathetic playground aides watched from a distance.

  Honey emerged in her skirt and white shirt, far more pristine.

  “Everyone over there is wearing pants,” Hawk said, “even the girls.”

  She shrugged. “No one’ll care. You ready, Hummer?”

  Together they trotted across the street to the school entrance. Hawk and Happy watched apprehensively as the pair bypassed the fence and disappeared among the buildings beyond.

  “Are you all right?” Hawk asked his youngest brother.

  Happy studied him, intent. “Are you getting nervous because of me?”

  A smile cracked across Hawk’s face. “I’m fine. You do a good job of controlling your projections, you know.”

  Dissatisfaction crossed the little boy’s face, but the expression smoothed almost immediately. He had an uncanny knack for neutralizing his feelings, especially for a six-year-old. In a way, that control made his projections that much more potent when he unleashed them full-force.

  “The Prom-B people made me practice,” Happy said. “They told me I was bothering the whole school and that if I didn’t learn to control my projections I wouldn’t get to see Honey anymore.”

  “Those jerks,” said Hawk, looping a protective arm around him. “You’re allowed to feel whatever you want, okay?”

  Happy smiled wanly but said nothing in return. Taciturn as he was now, he was still far more open than he had been a month ago when they first escaped. The longer they were away from the influence of the Prometheus Institute, the more he would open up. He would never again be the bright, joy-filled baby of Hawk’s memories, though. Prometheus had left its mark on them all.

  The bell across the street rang, and the children scrambled to line up and return to class. The shouts and games gave way to stillness, and the minutes afterward passed at a snail’s pace. At long last, two figures emerged from the main entrance. Hummer and Honey broke into a full run as soon as they were beyond the fence.

  “Come on,” said Hawk, and he snatched up his bag and Hummer’s. “Grab Honey’s stuff, and let’s go.”

  Happy followed the orders, and together they met the pair at the sidewalk.

  “We’ve got to hurry if we want to get there in time to scout things out,” said Hummer as he retrieved his backpack from Hawk’s extended hand. “The latitude and longitude are for a park in Central Phoenix. I’m pretty sure that the 1400 next to ‘Real Irish Tea’ is a time, two o’clock in the afternoon. That gives us a little over three hours to get there and get a feel for the area.”

  “What about the other numbers?” Hawk asked.

  “Vega and Deneb,” said Hummer vaguely.

  “Come again?”

  “Vega and Deneb—they’re the other two stars that make up the Summer Triangle with Altair. Look.” He stopped and pulled a sheet from his pocket, a printout from the school’s library. “This is a satellite image of the coordinates. They’re here, where these two paths converge into one. But if you look, you can see three ramada roofs positioned out from around this point—they’re at roughly the same angles from one another as Vega, Deneb, and Altair in the Summer Triangle.”

  “Meaning we want to go to Altair,” said Hawk, “and not to this point on the map where the paths meet.”

  “As best I can figure,” said Hummer.

  “But if that’s the case, then there’s no date in the code. How do we know they’ll be there today? How do we know we didn’t miss them yesterday?”

  “I think they’ll be there precisely because there’s no date. They gave us a code to figure out, so they probably gave us a grace period too. Plus, there’s no way they could be certain we even got the code to begin with. If you had thrown it away and someone else picked it up—like someone from the GCA trying to track us—then having a specific date along with the time would put them in danger. As it is, anyone sitting at that ramada at two o’clock in the afternoon can claim ignorance of a meeting.”

  “This is crazy,” Hawk said.

  “What’s even crazier is that we’re going to miss our bus if you two don’t pick up the pace,” said Honey. “We have two transfers to make to get where we want to go, so there’s not a whole lot of time.”

  “We figured out a bus route in the library too,” Hummer said in explanation. “Happy, try to keep your thoughts from focusing too much—we don’t want anyone to notice us, if we can help it.”

  “Happy knows what to do,” said Honey. “He gets plenty enough practice. Come on, now.”

  Her hurry proved unnecessary. They arrived at the bus stop a few minutes before the lumbering transport rolled up the road in front of them. Honey paid the four fares and advised the bus driver not to remember them before she skipped back to her seat. Midday public transportation was not over-crowded, and stops were less frequent than during the rush hours of morning and afternoon, but it was still slow-going. The buses ran less often, and the children were forced to wait between transfers, but roughly an hour and a half later they descended to the street next to a large public park.

  They had their plan of attack already decided, but Hawk repeated it nonetheless. “Happy, you’re with Hummer. Honey, you’re with me. Keep an eye out for anyone suspicious, especially any government types. Revere is going to circle above, and I’ll try to enlist as many of the local birds he
re to keep watch for us. Stay out of open areas, if you can.”

  The park was not overpopulated, since afternoon in August was hardly the time local residents wanted to be out and about, but there were still several groups of people scattered across its expanse. Many were older, retirees who were masters of their own time. Some of the younger people walked with baby strollers, and a cluster of small children played in an expanse of grass while their caregivers watched from the shaded benches nearby.

  In all, the place was quiet, peaceful.

  Hawk and Honey went one direction while Hummer and Happy went another. Gradually, both groups wove their way toward the latitude and longitude cross-point. They were only going to observe the spot from afar, and for a relatively short time. If Hummer was right, it wasn’t the actual rendezvous but merely a point of reference, but it couldn’t hurt to know what sort of people were walking those paths.

  This area of the park was fashioned around a man-made lagoon, a relic of eras past when such water features were allowed and even encouraged on community lands in the arid climate. This worked to Hawk’s advantage: the waterways were inhabited with ducks and swans. He chattered with them and made quick friends by feeding them bits of crackers—more so with the social little ducks, who were eager to interact with a potential food source. At first Honey stood idly by and allowed him to do his job, but soon enough she fished a granola bar from her backpack and started throwing pieces, much to the delight of the growing flock of birds.

  “Oh, they’re so on our side now,” said Hawk.

  Honey tutted. “Tell them to get back in the water. We’re starting to make a spectacle of ourselves.” She crumbled the remainder of her granola bar and tossed it into the nearby lagoon. Most of the ducks gladly followed, with no need of interference from Hawk.

  “Come on,” he said wryly. “Hummer and Happy have gotten way ahead of us.”

  The point given to them on the dart was near a bridge, where two paths merged into one. Hawk and Honey took refuge beneath a bay of trees on the other side of the bridge while Hummer and Happy circled around to watch from a different angle.