“It could be,” the man will comment, “that I have more fun in real life.”
“But for how long?” she will object, tapping her index finger on the table. “And in any case, in real life, information doesn’t transfer so quickly. If two people have to meet, how long does it take them to do it? It’s immediate there, and you can find people who know things you don’t.”
The man will look at her carefully.
“Things like pieces of software, useful for controlling extreme distance shooting?”
The girl will smile.
“Welcome to the modern era, dinosaur.”
Chief Commissioner Cervetti, in the Rome office of the Central Prevention Police Directorate, at the NOCS headquarters, will look at the grizzled-haired man.
“The Minister was impressed by your previous successes, Commissioner. The Chief Commissioner’s insistence helped us. We’ve carte blanche. Still...”
“We’re still after him.”
The old man will look at the desert in the distance, beyond the skyscrapers.
“I’m disappointed,” the voice will hiss. “Very disappointed.”
“You don’t have to worry. The agency doesn’t know anything.”
“Worrying is part of my job. Only fools and incurable optimists don’t care about the future, and I haven’t been optimistic for a long time. I had to summon the others. This game has to be closed quickly. The risk is huge, and everyone has something to lose, at very high levels, you know.”
The old man will move a few steps, and the image of the man projected onto the desert will squint his little gray eyes.
“He can no longer reenter now. And even if he succeeds, he won’t be able to tell them anything because he doesn’t know anything in turn.”
The old man’s voice, in the blurry backlight image in the Dubai sun, will arrive frostily at the heavy-set man’s hotel room on that gray morning.
“He doesn’t know he knows,” the sun ball will murmur. “Find him.”
The top floor of the white downtown Chicago building will be abuzz. The screens will transmit satellite images in the large hall, the agency staff’s rooms separated by simple sliding glass walls without doors. Down the hall, in an access room with large windows, two secretaries will record the conversation taking place inside the meeting room. Two armed men, of strong build and with short military haircuts, will watch over the front door.
“We’ve reason to believe, gentlemen, that our agent depicted here, John L. Whiley, is on the run, having stolen something from our section.”
The chief operating officer will indicate the face depicted in the holographic space, while the blond man will maneuver the images.
“The man is also the only survivor of a mysterious bloody action in which the people in these images died yesterday morning. They are all our agents; you can find their files in your reports. We’ve reason to suspect that Whiley may be somehow involved in the episode.”
It will be hot in the office on that spring day, and at the superior’s request, the air conditioning will be turned off.
“But?”
“However, as you may know, a few days ago the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office of the new Counterterrorism Division opened an investigation, seeing a connection between last month’s failed attack on His Holiness and the subsequent leaking of funds from our internal services.”
The curly-haired man will rise and look down at the street below, through the window with the blinds down.
“Don’t do that, Commissioner. Sooner or later it had to happen. The Counterterrorism Division has taken over the matter, and we’ll be its investigative unit. We’ll act with the utmost freedom of inquiry, but must report our information to the magistrate. The issue has now gone beyond national borders, and this investigation requires coordination with investigations from other countries. That means embassies, authorizations, permits, arrest warrants, you know how things go. And believe me, we were lucky. You’ll work with one of the best magistrates around.”
Someone will knock on the door.
“Come in,” the CEO will say.
A man in uniform.
“Dr. Bordini has arrived.”
“Let him sit down.”
“Bordini?” the Chief Commissioner will ask. “The ‘attack judge’?”
“Look, Cervetti, he doesn’t particularly like that old name the press gave him, which he has been carrying for at least thirty years, I think. So, two tips, don’t utter that name again, and collaborate in everything asked of you,” the CEO will say, nearly whispering.
The man in uniform will let in a small man, rather fleshy and balding, with a friendly smile under a thick black mustache. “CEO, thank you for receiving me,” the newcomer will say, shaking hands.
“But Dr. Bordini, imagine. We would have come to you.”
The elderly woman and the two men sitting at either side of the Director, as members of the board of Directors, must in turn report to the political bodies.
“Excuse me, Director, but on what assumptions have we come to these conclusions?” the thin blonde woman will ask. “He’s a frightened man, he suffered a shock for which he was not prepared, he’s not an operative, and our recovery action clearly frightened him further. He felt accused. What if he’s innocent?”
“It’s a hypothesis that we won’t reject, of course, Meredith,” the Director will reply. “But we’ve a duty to represent the facts to the committee, and there are new facts. This morning, at dawn, Chicago police found Dr. Richard Proctor’s flying car, which we’ve been looking for since yesterday. This is another nonoperational agent of ours, also in charge of the research division, in another section.”
The muscular man will pass a file from a holographic sheet to the blond, who will make a rough hologram appear in the room.
“Unfortunately, Dr. Proctor’s corpse was in the driver’s seat. His throat was slit. It’s not a nice thing to see.”
The thin woman will look down, shaking her head.
“Now, the facts are as follows,” the CEO continues. “First, Whiley took Professor Borman’s pulse gun from a compartment, the existence of which he knew, and deprogrammed it by inserting it into Borman’s hands. We know this because the data passed to Whiley’s drive. Second, we know he called Proctor from the gardens and they talked about ten minutes, according to testimony from the archives and two eyewitnesses in the park. Third, we found an image of him heading to Brookfield on an airborne bus, and tonight we found a recording from Brookfield again on a bus to the center.”
For about three seconds, Whiley will move in space, the same image found by the blond man, compared to the sharp one in front of the Medoc.
“We passed on information about Whiley’s presence in that neighborhood to the police, and this morning at dawn a patrol found Proctor’s flying car.”
“I was in a bit of a hurry,” the little man will simply answer, shaking hands warmly.
“Doctor, let me introduce the person in charge of the operation, Chief Commissioner Cervetti.”
The little man will look down on the bearded young man with black curly hair.
“Very pleased to meet you. So you have the crisis unit in hand. Well, fine. We’re going to have a pretty delicate and confidential investigation to carry out, right?”
“My pleasure. My men are ready, and they are all reliable and reserved,” Cervetti will say, returning the handshake.
The CEO will beckon the magistrate to sit down.
“How can I help you? We opened a file, but we still don’t have much.”
“Actually,” the little man will answer by laying the overcoat on a chair, “could you begin with offering me a good coffee?”
The girl will accompany the blond man to the exit of the main bar of Ataturk Airport, in the Bakırköy district of Istanbul, towards the boarding lane.
“So, did you figure out how to contact me?”
“All very simple, I would say,” the man will answer, walking by
his side with a small carry-on bag. “I rent a cube and log in by registering with the fake holographic address you gave me and the code name of Anna_324. So, from my cube I connect to the address Isola della Tortuga 1. But couldn’t you come up with a less obvious name?”
“I didn’t choose it. And it makes a big splash in our circle.” The girl will walk quickly. “So, what do you do?”
“And then...,” the man will repeat in a singing tone, like a child repeating a lesson “... every night at midnight, London time, I connect from anywhere in the world and enter the virtual club of the Pirate Tavern—what bullshit, but how old are you in there—and I wait half an hour, to see if you’re there. If you’re there, we’ll talk about bullshit, and if you’ve got something, you’re going to say the code phrase ‘Grandma’s got good eyes.’ Otherwise, if you failed, you’re going to say that ‘Grandma has to have eye surgery’.”
“Of course you have a good imagination...”
“Unfortunately,” the Director will continue seriously, “his corpse was inside the flying car. The car was in a silo near the park, at the zoo terminal, and we got all the video recordings of the park rooms. It wasn’t hard to find them.”
In the space at the bottom of the meeting room, Whiley and Proctor will walk near a fence, and suddenly a rhino’s horn will appear to enter between the commissioners.
“The latest news puts Whiley in the city center. He took two thousand five hundred Eurodollars from his personal account at a branch. Then, he disappeared. We don’t have any news from him.”
Silence will descend on the hall.
“So, you want to tell me that this guy met for more than an hour at the park with a colleague, who is then found dead in the same location with his throat slit?” will ask one of the two men to the Director’s right.
“Yes. Now, I wonder: a coincidence? Is he acting alone? Does he have a plan? And if he’s innocent and he’s not involved in this whole thing, then why is he hiding?”
The Director will look at the members of the Commission.
“And where is he now?” the woman beside the Director will ask.
“Honestly, we don’t know. But from now on, he is officially wanted by the Agency, suspected of federal crimes in all the states of Euro-America.”
The thin woman will look at the inexpressive face of the gray-haired man, sitting taciturnly in front.
The girl will sit in a waiting room chair in the last row near the bathrooms, with a serious expression.
“Look, there’s nothing to laugh about. You think it’s a game, but it’s not. I have to use all the tricks I’m capable of, but this time I’m really taking a risk. I think I’ll find what I’m looking for, but of course it’s not legal, and if what you’re planning as big as I think, rest assured that you’ve raised a hornet’s nest everywhere. Holographic space is monitored day and night by hundreds of thousands of agents and research programs. They study us, they collect millions of bits of information, and they sift through it. Then, if they find a word, a sentence, a number, anything they suspect, they look for the node and from there they track where one is connecting from. They can also detach listening units, if they know where to look, and at that point, while you’re playing in virtual life, they approach you in real life. Maybe they’re a hundred feet away, or maybe behind the door. And when they find you, someone breaks in with guns blazing and an arrest warrant.”
The man will look at the girl, no longer smiling.
“I saw too many friends burned because they didn’t take things seriously. Today, they’re bringing you in for some shit.”
“Okay, so what precautions should we have?”
“I’m going to create a holographic image, a kind of virtual mask for you. It’s illegal, by the way, but very few people know how to do it. No one will see your real face. You’ll be Anna, a blonde woman.”
“Make me pretty, at least.”
“We’ll have only one contact in the cube. Only one doesn’t allow the real surveillance units to capture your image.”
“Real surveillance.”
“Yes, even if they catch us, they can’t immediately send a mobile unit to the place; it takes time. Speed and movement are the secret. We’ll only have one contact, or he goes, or he breaks it. If I’ve solved it, we’ll have the second contact; otherwise, I’ll refund you the money, deducting the expenses.”
“What if you solve it?”
The girl will frown.
“That’s where the mess begins. Not for you, but for me.”
Thursday, 8:32 a.m.
Newspapers will not have been read for decades, and there will be no more daily editions. The news will be in real time and the articles will be published at any time of the day or night. Contract journalists will publish news for publishers even in competition with each other, and the system will be regulated by a supervisory body to monitor the authenticity of the news, thus relieving the newspaper Directors from the role of managers to allow the speed of information. In the meeting room for a few seconds, watching holographic news, no one will comment. Then, the thin woman will turn to the Director:
“If it’s wanted, what version do we give to the holographic network?”
“Goedhart, do you want to tell us about the coverage plan?” the Director will ask. The man will nod to the blond man, and the holograms will fill the hall.
“Whiley has no close relatives. He’s not married, he’s an orphan. We said he’s dead. No one will ask to see his body, and if the autopsy is likely to be ordered by the magistrate, it will reveal a man killed by gunfire. We put the corpse of an inmate at the scene of the crime; he vaguely resembles him, killed with a blow to the face.”
“Why, for Christ’s sake?” the thin woman will raise her voice.
“In fact, why this choice?” will add one of the two commissioners sitting alongside the CEO.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the elegant man will say calmly, nervously tightening his eyes.” We don’t know what threat we are dealing with, and we don’t know the reason for the threat. Until we’ve more information, we want to leave Whiley with an open door. To start an official search through the police would be to alert him, and he’ll go on the run. That way, if he’s innocent, he’ll look for us, and he’ll come back according to normal recovery procedures. Then, if he’s innocent, we’ll come up with a cover. And if he’s guilty, well, we’ll see what we can do.”
“Bullshit,” the thin woman will comment.
“Meredith, do you have a better plan?” the Director will ask.
The girl will look around the waiting room before continuing, in a low voice: “The receiver can’t be intercepted because the data transmission only lasts a few minutes. But loading software like the one you asked me for is heavy, and it’s traceable. It can take twenty or twenty-five minutes. Enough for them to find me, if they know where to look.”
The man will look at her with his arms folded, taciturn.
“I’ve adopted simple rules for this. Camouflage comes first, but that doesn’t save you if they come into your house shooting. Changing the site is second. I never use the same broadcasting position twice, to avoid giving real life references. The third is my defense programs.”
“Ianitores, the gatekeepers.”
“Yes,” the girl will frown, “how did you know?”
“Your master has a long tongue, like all old men. So, how are you going to do that?”
“If I solve it, I’ll give you an appointment, only one. Be sure not to miss it. I’m going to change the actual transmission location, but I’ll still be taking a risk. I’ll hand you the job, cash in the balance, then disappear for at least six months.”
The girl will put her hands in her pants pockets, lowering her head to her chest. “... As long as I’m not behind bars.”
The man will look at the flight schedules on the holographic boards. “Cosmic pessimism, I see. That’s why you always dress in black.”
The girl will watch him get up with
his carry-on luggage.
“And what are you going to do in the meantime?”
“I’ll take a few days off,” the man will say. “I need to get some gifts.”
The girl will watch him get up without saying goodbye and queue for boarding. Then she will stand, putting her hands in the pockets of her baggy black pants, heading thoughtfully toward the exit.
Here we go.
Futura: Parallel Universes. Book 1 Page 21
