by Tony Batton
From the hallway a voice called out "I can answer that question, Ms Reems."
Reems saw Eli Quinn in a dressing gown, looking tired. "He's in the panic room."
"Bern has a panic room? Why was I not notified?" Nobody answered. "I want to speak to him now."
"It's not like he's going anywhere," Quinn said. "Not with that ankle bracelet on."
"I wish I shared your confidence. Now show me."
They pushed through the crowd of uniformed and plain-clothes officers, up the stairs to the master bedroom. Quinn walked over to a large, heavy bookcase. "Behind here."
"Open it."
"It can only be opened from the inside." He raised an eyebrow. "It wouldn't be much use if an intruder could simply access it."
"Can he hear us out here?"
"It has external microphones. They should be functional."
"Then why hasn't he come out?"
"I don't know. Perhaps he was injured."
"Or perhaps he's just messing with us. Either way, we need that thing open."
The sergeant reappeared. "Truman is on his way here, by helicopter."
Reems shook her head. "Such a risk to take. Why?" She looked again at the heavy bookcase, then turned back to the black ops team. "I look forward to asking Deputy Director Truman when he gets here."
Twenty-Three
THE WOODEN PLANK SNAPPED IN a protest of splinters, the two halves clattering to the concrete floor. Kate looked at them with satisfaction, feeling the heat on her knuckles. With everything going on at CERUS she had missed her karate class earlier, but breaking a few boards was helping temper her frustration. She took another piece of wood from the stack and placed it atop the two blocks. Her strike was just a small sharp movement, but focused on exactly the right point, it caused something to be transformed. If only her other problems could be solved in the same way.
Bern's release continued to swamp every news and social media channel: it was the only thing the press wanted to discuss. Her job had been reduced to fire-fighting. Lentz had been locked up in internal meetings and had barely spared her a word. And then there was what Geraldine had told her. Could there be any truth in Reems having authorised Bern's release? It made no sense.
Kate took a slow breath then punched sharply. Again the plank broke.
Bern was still locked up, just in a more comfortable prison, but meeting with Geraldine had upset her, tapping into an anxiety she hadn't fully been able to shake for a year. Had she been right not to publish the Tantalus story: to instead accept the unique opportunity within CERUS? Or had she forgotten what had set her on the path to becoming a journalist in the first place? For years, whenever anyone asked, she said, with no small measure of pomp, that she 'wanted to seek the truth': to hold big business and governments accountable. To help people understand what was going on.
Somehow that had been lost. She might not have been actively lying this last year, but she couldn't deny she had been promoting a narrow, partial view of the truth. That was what PR had turned out to be, at least at CERUS. So what should she do? What could she do?
Kate picked up another wooden board, the last one from the stack. A last opportunity, at least for this evening, to focus her rage. She drew back her fist then stopped. Tom's words echoed in her mind.
I want to find out about my mother.
She knew from her previous investigations into Bern that he was an only child whose parents had both died before he was twenty. His past was locked up tighter than a vice. Very little was known about him that was not in the official biographies. Sure there were rumours, always plenty of those, but they contradicted each other more than they agreed. What Kate needed was a way in. Maybe Tom's mother was it.
The fact that Tom was Bern's son was not public. Could Amelia Faraday be a way to get inside Bern's secrets and pull apart the web of deceit he had spun? And, after all, Tom had actually asked her to find out more. Of course if she did this, she could not ignore the very real risk she was taking. If Lentz found out she was using company resources and records for her own purposes, her situation could get tricky. If Reems found out, she could get arrested. But wasn't the greater risk not doing anything?
First she could try and find out the truth. Then she could decide what to do with it.
Kate looked down at the board. Her sensei had told her to 'visualise the broken board, and it is already broken. Apply not your fist, but your will'. She blew out hard and let the punch fly.
Twenty-Four
LENTZ TYPED A LONG ACCESS code into the door control panel. The room had been closed off a year ago, and multiple protocols needed to be reversed before it became accessible. It was one of the unused laboratory facilities within the building, taking up half of Level 61. Mothballed to cut costs.
Not any more.
Lentz carried the book, data card and plastic capsules almost reverentially to one of the network terminals, an access point to the main building servers. She slotted the data card in a reader and watched files start to stream across the screen. She briefly wondered why the card had not been more heavily encrypted, but was distracted by the information.
Project Resurface.
This had been her project - more than any other. Tantalus she had provided support on. Resurface she had led. It was her biggest disappointment about having to live a different life. She thought perhaps CERUS had given up - she had tried to access the files during her exile, without success. Since her return to CERUS she had tried everything. She had searched the company's systems from top to bottom, and found no reference to Resurface. It was as if it had never existed.
And yet here it was, in her hands. Lentz was a scientist, of course, so her delight was naturally tempered with caution. Why, of all things, had it been in Bern's safe? She started reviewing the files. There were recent reports, schematics, as recent as just a year old. They had made great advances - inevitable given that nano manufacture had become a reality. But still they were having problems.
At its simplest level, Resurface was about a 'coating', although that new coating was a paradigm shift; by coating an object with a new 'surface', the material's properties could be fundamentally changed. It could be made harder; it could conduct or insulate heat; it could alter its appearance, in colour and brightness; it could become adhesive or slippery. And those were just the simple applications they were exploring, as part of which they had developed the all-in-one nano suits. As with Tantalus, there were many more exotic applications being dreamed up, and that was where they were having fundamental technical problems.
Because they didn't have me, thought Lentz with a sly smile. Her phone buzzed. It was Hallstein. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Like you don't know." Lentz replied.
"Can I help? I'd really like to."
"Perhaps best you don't. Best that both of us don't get fired."
"Why would we get... oh. You don't plan on telling Reems?"
"Not until I have it working," Lentz said. "I'd rather surprise her with the outcome."
"Not counting chickens?"
"Something like that."
"Fine. Well let me know if anything changes. And I'll let you know if Reems suddenly turns up."
Lentz clicked the phone off and stared again at the screen. It was the most recent report. They really were 90% of the way there. And the final barrier was one she had been thinking about for more than twenty years - she had made extensive notes about possible paths to resolution. With the level of current processing power it might just prove...
And then it hit her. She almost did a dance on the spot. She could fix this. Sliding across to another computer terminal she called up the building requisition tool and started ordering equipment. She was going to need quite a lot.
Twenty-Five
"I IMAGINE," STEPHANIE REEMS SAID, "that this operation didn't go quite as you'd planned."
Connor Truman sat at the table, arms folded, his coffee cup already empty. "Could we at least go somewhere secur
e for this conversation?"
"The entire building has been swept."
"No offence, but was it effective?"
"It detected the recording device you have in your jacket pocket. A pen, probably?"
Truman stared back for a few seconds, then reached into his pocket and placed a silver biro on the table. Reems smiled, picked it up and dropped it with a splash into a nearby vase of flowers. Truman scowled. "Do you have any idea how expensive that was?"
"Less costly than continuing to pull in opposite directions."
"And I should trust that you are not recording this conversation?"
"You're on my turf, Mr Truman, so my rules." Her expression darkened. "Why were your team even here without any form of authorisation or notification, carrying out a mission on British soil? An armed mission?"
"Do you want cooperation or do you want an argument?"
"Don't think you can just bluster your way out of this."
Truman looked around the room, sucked in his lip, then said, "We wanted to talk with Bern. Believe me when I say we would not have done this without good reason."
"You're going to have to do considerably better than that."
Truman looked at his empty coffee mug, then poured more from the jug in the middle of the table. "What I am about to tell you is strictly off the record. And I, myself, am not aware of all the details." He took a small sip from his mug. "We want to speak with Bern in connection with the theft of classified technology from one of our federal installations."
"Why not just go through regular channels?"
"If you'll recall, you turned us down."
"You didn't explain anything!"
"Because we're embarrassed. And," he paused, "because we don't want to share the technology."
"But why would Bern talk to you? What can you offer him?" Reems' eyes narrowed. "Unless you were going to smuggle him out of the country, offer him some deal in the US?" Her eyes almost became slits. "That's it, isn't it."
"I have no comment."
"And of course you're hoping that he will talk to you about Tantalus. Well, I have a deal for you. It's a non-negotiable one-time offer. You can interview Bern, as long as I can sit in."
Truman rubbed a hand over his eyes. "How am I supposed to sell that to my superiors?"
"Tell them it's the price to get what you want." Her phone buzzed and she looked at the screen. "And it seems we have worked out how to override the door to his panic room, so the moment of opportunity is now."
Truman groaned. "Someday you'll need my help and I will remember this moment."
"Of that I have no doubt."
Reems gave the tech sergeant the order and an overlay lock was mounted on the sealed access panel of the panic room door. From a nearby laptop the override codes were fed in. Reems and Truman watched as the door hissed and swung outwards. They stepped forward. The room was perhaps three metres square and contained a small bed and a refrigerator. One wall was lined with shelves stacked with tinned food and bottled water. A selection of electronics was mounted in a rack unit on another wall.
But Bern was not there.
Truman walked in. "How is this possible? His locator is..." He stopped and picked up a blue band lying on the floor. "It's still working."
"Except," Reems said, "for the fact that it shouldn't have been possible to remove it without triggering an alarm. Still he can't have left the site." Reems turned to the tech sergeant. "I want the entire estate searched. And get Dominique Lentz out here. At once."
Twenty-Six
TOM AWOKE FEELING LIKE HE had been sleeping forever. He couldn't recall where he was or how he had got there. It felt like he was experiencing the after-effects of an evening of extraordinary excess. But as he looked around the room he knew that wasn't the reason.
No, he felt this way because he had been drugged. He tried to roll over, but found he was strapped to a metal-framed hospital bed. Sensors were taped to his chest and from them wires led to an archaic-looking medical computer; an IV drip ran into one of his arms. He moved his head and saw he was in a plain, concrete-walled room. A CCTV camera was staring at him. He tried to call out, but with a ferociously dry throat all he could manage was a croak. There were footsteps outside, then an old man, wearing a doctor's white coat and a tired expression, walked in.
"You're awake. Surprisingly quickly."
"Who are you? Where am I?" Tom asked. "And where is Mandy?"
"I'm the doctor, and that's all I can tell you. Sorry, strict instructions."
"How long have I been out?"
"Forty-eight hours, give or take. You're in good health." He looked at the screen. "In fact, better than excellent health."
"I don't know what to tell you," Tom said with a glare.
"Whatever it is, you can tell me," said a large man as he walked in. He had a shaved head and what looked like an ingrained scowl. "Although I should warn you, I know a great deal already, Thomas Faraday." He stared at the doctor, tapping what looked like the vein in his wrist. The man nodded and scurried out.
"So are you going to tell me what is going on?"
"We're somewhere no friend of yours is going to find you, if they were even looking."
Tom shrugged as best he could in the restraints. "Not surprising. I don't have many friends."
The large man paced to the end of the bed and stared down at him. "We know who you are. We know about CERUS. We know you stole technology from them a year ago. And we know that a lot of people are looking for you."
"And how is it you found me?"
"Someone put a bounty on you. And that means a lot of people were highly motivated. We were the ones that got lucky."
Tom closed his eyes. He could feel computers nearby. And networks. But he was still groggy, his mind felt like a wet sponge.
The man folded his arms. "We couldn't find any trace of the stolen tech on you - some sort of computer hardware, we were told - so we need to know where you've hidden it. Either hand it over or we hand you over. It's up to you."
"So you don't actually know what you're looking for? Didn't it seem odd that they didn't tell you?"
"Not really. The whole thing is highly confidential."
Tom opened his eyes. "You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Believe me when I say there is nothing I can hand over."
"Then you leave us with no alternative but to trade you."
"You think you're going to be allowed to walk away with your money?"
The man shrugged. "This isn't my first rodeo."
"What about Mandy?"
"The girl? Why do you care about her?"
"It's not her fault she got caught up with this. Just let her leave."
"You should worry about yourself."
The doctor reappeared, holding a large glass syringe. He looked nervously at Tom. "We need a sample for a DNA analysis to confirm your identity."
"You guys are way out of your depth. This might not be your first rodeo, but they're running it."
"Just take his blood and let's get on with things." The large man glared at Tom. "Don't cause us any trouble and we won't have to hurt you."
Tom growled. "Whoever comes is probably going to kill you, you realise that right? Once they have me, you become disposable."
The large man shook his head and walked out.
The doctor looked at him, somewhat reluctantly. "I'm sorry about this."
"Then do something to help me."
"But not that sorry." He stepped forward with the syringe.
Twenty-Seven
LENTZ STOOD LOOKING AT THE interior of the panic room. Something was not right, but she could not place what. She had examined every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling, expecting to find a concealed panel, but there was nothing.
Reems folded her arms. "How did he get out?"
Lentz shook her head. "Are there any cameras in here?"
"None upstairs. Apparently Bern is not an exhibitionist. Downstairs there are several but nothing has sh
own up on them, besides lots of special forces and police in uniform."
"Then, much as I hate to admit it, I'm at a loss. Are we absolutely certain he went inside this room?"
"The log shows the room was activated. There was nobody else in the house and the bracelet signal confirmed it."
"So we just assumed? Did we really look? I mean, with the tracer showing where he was, did we actually look elsewhere in the building?"
Reems hesitated. "He had to be inside. That's where the bracelet was."
"Yet he has, unarguably, taken the thing off. And we have no idea when he did it." Lentz walked over and picked up the ID bracelet. "Did you use a second-hand one?"
"We did not."
Lentz held it up, pointing out scuff and scratch marks.
Reems snatched it off her. "This isn't the one we gave him. But we already confirmed it is the correct frequency."
"So perhaps he didn't take the other one off. These have anti-tamper alarms, which would have made it risky. Instead he set up this one," she waved the worn bracelet, "with the old frequency, and either masked or changed the settings of the one he was wearing. Then, while we looked for the original frequency, he left with the other still on."
"We've had a team watching the estate perimeter ever since he arrived home. There's no way he would have passed unnoticed."
"He's confused us somehow." Lentz suddenly frowned. "Do you have tracker dogs?"
"I already requisitioned a team," Reems said. "They'll be here shortly."
The dogs very quickly found a trace. Bern had left through the front door, then made his way across the lawn and along the driveway. From there he had walked straight through the main gates, and into a shallow stream that ran past the estate. The dogs chased about, barking enthusiastically but without further direction.
"They seem pretty sure," Lentz said. "Even if it hasn't helped us actually find him."
"I had several men stationed just outside," Reems replied. "Bern could not have simply walked past them."
