I knew we were heading in the right direction towards the university because all the kids gliding by us on the sidewalk as we lagged in traffic wore Harry Potter glasses and held neoprene laptop cases under their arms.
The cab stopped in front of the library. I popped the passenger door open and turned to Rabbit. “Are you ready to go find this boy wonder?”
“Let’s do it.” Rabbit drummed his fingers over the briefcase. He hefted open the thick library door, holding it for me as I stubbed my cigarette in the outdoor ash tray.
The circulation desk was a vast horseshoe with a small army of librarians seated behind it, typing busily onto their computers. The floor we stood on was glossy marble, and the expanse all around us was defined by stacks of books that seemed to soar into heaven.
“The research stacks are in the back,” I said to Rabbit. My eyes were scanning the map of the library’s layout that was nailed above the drinking fountain.
Side by side, we traversed the labyrinth of the book stacks, our eyes guarding left and right for a hint that Jamie was watching us. I was on the lookout for the sight of a dweeb in Coke-bottle glasses. I reached into my pocket and brushed my thumb over my revolver for reassurance.
“Alice,” I heard a husky, yet feminine, voice call out.
I cooled my tracks. I swung my body around and saw a curvaceous, six-foot-tall woman standing behind me. She had pale blond hair and poison-apple red lips.
“Yes?” I answered her.
“Are you Alice Fix?” she asked in a wanton voice smothered in a French accent.
“Are you an emissary for Jamie?” I asked, with my eyes beginning a full body survey of the woman in front of me, starting with her red platform boots and finishing at the scanty white blouse stretched over her curvy figure. She wasn’t exactly dressed for a study session in the library.
“Are you ready to negotiate?” she asked.
“My orders are to negotiate with Jamie.”
“I am Jamie.”
“You’re Jamie?” Rabbit buzzed.
She pressed her face to mine, and her lips, lathered in red lipstick, gritted the words, “I’m here to negotiate with you, Alice Fix.”
My hand nervously fetched inside my pocket and stroked the reassuring snout of my revolver. “Let’s negotiate,” I said.
The blonde slid her long, delicate fingers, with nails primed in cherry-cordial red, between the slice of her v-neck collar. She pulled out a small black device with silver prongs protruding from the face of it. I clutched the revolver in my pocket, nervously thumbing the trigger, ready to strike. Before I could draw it from my pocket, the woman’s hand flew up to my neck and she used the device to deliver a painful jolt to my neck, which dashed through my nervous system in a split second.
I dropped cold. My eyelids were in a spasm. The activity around me was disintegrating into nothing but kaleidoscope slashes of light. I was weaving in and out of consciousness. What was that strange feeling? Air? The air was whipping my cheeks as I was dragged through the narrow passages between the bookshelves.
* * *
When I came awake, I could feel a cold sting on my cheek. My skin felt as though it was pressed to a block of ice. I blinked my eyes open and saw what appeared to be a dusty labyrinth of green tiles spread in a grid pattern all around me.
I realized I was lying on a cold, dusty floor.
I webbed my palms flat against the ground, lifting my body up to rest on my elbows, and I scanned the wire cages all around me. The stale odor of wet and mold captured my sense of smell. My phone chirped and my hand slithered into my pocket to retrieve it and bring it up to my ear. “Hello.”
“Alice!” Rabbit cried. “Where are you?”
“That son-of-a-bitch blonde locked me inside the library’s book vault after stun-gunning me. You have to come let me out.”
“You’re in the book vault? I’ll come get you.”
“Why am I always the one who ends up passed out and injured while you make a clean getaway?”
“Alice, there was nothing I could do. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Rabbit hung up and my eyes circled the corners of the book vault. I looked at the piles of mammoth-sized leather-bound books surrounding me and wondered if being locked in a book vault was some sort of cosmic punishment for all the books I skipped on reading when I was in school. I heard the lock on the vault door click. “Rabbit?” I called out. “What took you so long? Oh, but whatever, I’m happy enough to get out of here I could probably kiss you.”
“Then go ahead and kiss me,” a voice, which was too deep and severe to be Rabbit’s, replied.
The door swung open, and on the other side, a figure in a black trench coat was revealed.
“You?” I grumbled. “What are you doing here, Pressley?”
“The same thing you were doing, chasing Jamie, but we both missed out.”
“Why did Jamie go all psycho on me?”
Pressley rubbed his fingers to his temples. “That wasn’t Jamie. Jamie was found hanged in his dorm room this morning.”
“If Jamie is dead, then who was that psycho broad who just stun-gunned me?”
“Someone who got the information from Jamie before she snapped his neck and strung him up next to his Lego collection.” He let the vault door snap shut behind him and approached me, his broad shoulders closing in on me like an eclipse, his sun orbiting my moon. “Someone who is apparently better at this game than you or I.”
I pounded the wall with my fist. “That woman killed Jamie?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, Mr. CIA, but I would say Operation: Boom is certainly living up to its name and blowing up right in your face.”
“I’d say the heat is getting pretty hot from where you’re standing, too.” He pressed his palms to the wall behind me. I was caged in his musky orbit.
“Do you think it’s alright if I smoke in the library?” I was thumbing my pockets for a cigarette.
Pressley rolled his eyes at me. “Alice.”
“What? It’s a totally reasonable question, the Belgian are a very liberal people. Plus, I need to calm my nerves. The voltage in that stun gun could have brought down a horse.”
“Please be serious for a minute. You were set up. This killer blonde knew you were coming to Brussels.”
“So? Must not take much. You knew I was here, didn’t you?”
“I have good intel. United States Government intel. Apparently there’s an amateur out there with better-than-government intel. We should be worried, both of us should be worried.”
“Don’t try and act like we have a shared interest. We are enemies, not allies.” I twirled out from under his arm, sustaining a lingering look into his eyes as I stamped my boots away from him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do some damage control.”
“I’m not giving this up, Alice.”
“Stop chasing the dynamite stick if you know what’s good for you.”
Pressley hooked my silky dress by the collar and dragged me back into his embrace. “But was I chasing the dynamite stick, or was I chasing you?”
With his thumbs tightening on the place where my ears met my neck, he plunged his lips onto mine. I kissed back, which inspired his lips to push harder against mine. His fingers were lingering down to my shoulders, pushing my back against the wall. His mouth was making its way down my neck and my hands were digging his back.
“Alice?” Rabbit called from the doorway.
I pushed Pressley off of me. My lips felt swollen and pulsating from the dominance of the kiss. “Rabbit?” I cried. “Where were you? Did you see that blonde behemoth take me down?”
But Rabbit didn’t respond to my voice. He simply looked back and forth at the tight space between me and Pressley with a trance-like look in his eyes. He backed out of the door and sprinted away.
“See?” My eyes were piercing Pressley’s. “Look how you’re screwing up my life? I told you to stay away from me.”
“Are you afraid of him telling Motley about us?”
“The last thing I need is to be caught smooching with a CIA goon.”
“What are you afraid of? Will Motley hurt you if he finds out?”
“It would make me a liability.”
“Alice, this is crap. What are you doing getting involved with some guy you’re so afraid of? Why don’t you just walk away?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not? Is he holding something over you?”
“No, it’s more like I’m holding something over myself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
“Never mind. I need to go find Rabbit before he tattles on me. Please, Pressley, just stay out of my life before you really screw things up for me.”
Chapter Ten: The Vault
THE HOLLOWS OF the library stacks were a dizzying whirlwind as I chased the corners searching for a sign of Rabbit. I busted outside and traversed the gray streets that surrounded the library until giving up and flagging a taxi to the airport. An ungentle downpour had engulfed the city and I had gotten soaked as I rushed from my cab to the tarmac. By the time I got onboard the plane, it had almost taken off without me, and I had to barrel down the narrow aisle with my clothes and hair drenched in rain and black mascara spiders painted down the side of my cheek.
I crashed into the seat next to Rabbit, but he pretended not to notice me. An explosion riled within me as I thumped my wet boots off. In the process, my confession note tumbled onto the floor and I quickly scooped it up and shoved it back inside my empty boot. I looked over to see if Rabbit had noticed, but he had been too busy pretending not to see me to notice the rogue note.
I could take the silence no longer. “You son of a bitch, Rabbit!” I screamed. “You ratted me out already, didn’t you?”
Rabbit stiffly turned to face me, but his eyes never quite met mine. “That guy you were kissing inside the book vault was Pressley Connard, the CIA agent, wasn’t he?”
I peeked at Rabbit’s laptop screen and saw that he had a photo of Pressley’s face blown up on the screen. “Congratulations, you can use Google.”
“Alice, what the hell do you think you were doing kissing Pressley Connard? He works for the government. Do you really think it’s okay to suck face with him? What side are you on, anyway?”
“You don’t know anything about what you saw, Rabbit, so butt out.”
“Well, it’s too late, because Motley already knows about it. I called him and told him.”
“Rabbit, remember the other night at my apartment when you asked me why I didn’t want to be friends with you? This is exactly why. You’re a freaking snitch.”
“Don’t try and guilt me. You crossed the line tonight when you kissed him.”
“Rabbit, why are you so offended by who I kiss?”
“Because, Alice, he is the enemy.”
“You’re acting awfully possessive. Are you jealous?”
“Jealous? Alice, don’t be crazy,” Rabbit said, tucking his hands under his chin, and I thought I detected the slightest hint of broken-heartedness in his eyes. “Stop talking to me. I’ll just let Motley deal with you.”
“I’ll handle Motley. You just stay the hell away from me.” My phone rang and I sprang to my feet and booked to the bathroom so Rabbit couldn’t hear my conversation. “Hello,” I answered, while pressing the bathroom door shut behind me.
Motley’s voice was eerily calm when he spoke at me. “Alice, you blew another job. Maybe I was right that night you fell out of the Eiffel Tower when I said you might be slipping.”
I paced the tiny, modular airplane bathroom and exclaimed, “I’m not slipping. This couldn’t be helped. Someone else was after the dynamite stick, and they got there first. Jamie was dead before I even landed in Brussels.”
There was a long pause from Motley’s end, so I bit my lip against the silence. Finally Motley asked the question that had been lingering. “What about kissing the enemy?”
“You mean Pressley Connard? Did Rabbit tell you that? You can’t listen to Rabbit. He’s probably just jealous. You should see the way he violates me with his eyes when I’m wearing anything tight.”
“I don’t care what Rabbit is. What I want to know is if you have a way to explain yourself, Alice.”
“The truth is I was just kissing that government blowhard to screw with him.”
“Screwing with him seems to be the problem, now doesn’t it, Alice?”
“What I mean is that I was using the kiss to see if I could get any information off the lips I was kissing. I was simply using his attraction to me as a tool.”
“Alice, let’s put the matter with Pressley aside for now. You are going to have another opportunity to work on your gift of persuasion very soon. Moments ago, I contacted the pilot and told him to reroute the plane away from Paris.”
“You’re rerouting us? Why?”
“A new challenge has sprung up and it demands our full attention.”
“What is the challenge?”
“Something called Project Nine.”
“Project Nine?” I repeated. “I’ve never heard of it before. Who are the players?”
“There is a hardware company called Cibix, which manufactures thumb drives, disks, and other computer devices.”
“I’ve heard of Cibix, of course, everyone has. I mean, I’ve seen the label on lots of thumb drives. A squiggly tornado, right? But why would they be a problem?”
“Recently, Cibix entered a contract with the United States Government. They are in the process of developing a program that could be very dangerous for us. When completed, the program will be able to covertly scan computer hard drives for numerical combinations of nine.”
“You mean Social Security numbers?”
“Precisely. After finding the numerical combinations, it then scans the surrounding words, up to a thousand at a time, in order to capture a name associated with that nine-digit combination. The program can be spread like a worm from user to user, so that it will infect users just as the virus from the November Hit did.”
“So it’s like a reverse of the original virus?”
“That’s its function essentially. Alice, what the government plans to accomplish with Project Nine is to uncover a cache of any and all Social Security numbers ever entered into an existing computer. Virtually any computer that has ever had a Social Security number so much as typed onto it before or after the November Hit is a target. This is how they plan to restore the identities of every last rogue citizen of the United States, one by one.”
I slumped down on the floor beside the toilet and tucked my knees under my chin. “This is dreadful, Motley. This could shut us down.”
“Alice, I am flying you and Rabbit to the offices where the program for Project Nine is being developed. You are going to sabotage it.”
“Sabotage?” I took a peek at myself in the mirror and ran my fingertips along the rim of my eyes to wipe off the ribbons of black mascara. “This sounds dangerous.”
“Rabbit is in his seat right now downloading and reviewing instructions I sent him. I will need the both of you to collaborate closely in order for this to be a success. It’s a high risk prospect and it has to be seamless or it will blow up in our faces. Everything is at stake, Alice.”
I pushed open the bathroom door and poked my head out so that I got a clear view of Rabbit down the aisle. He was hunched over his laptop, his eyes engrossed in scanning the data on the screen. “You can count on me, Motley. You know you can.” The plane jerked violently and I steadied myself against the corner of the sink to stay upright. “I think I just felt the plane reroute. Where are we headed?”
“Right into the thick of it, Alice. The Cibix world headquarters in New York City.”
I felt my heart clock to a stop. “New York City?” I stammered out. “Do you really think it’s safe for Rabbit
and I to return to America for the first time? To be back so close to home?”
“Alice, nothing is more dangerous for us right now than doing nothing.”
I felt the plane’s cabin make an uneven jerk and my stomach dropped. “Okay,” I said. I hung up the phone, letting it drop from my hands so that it spun across the hard floor. I doubled over the toilet.
A moment later, I stumbled out of the bathroom wiping my chin.
“I take it Motley informed you of the job?” Rabbit asked with his eyes deployed on me as I plopped onto my seat.
I had to sedate myself from entertaining wildly violent fantasies about harming Rabbit. I wanted Rabbit’s skin under my nails for ratting me out, but I knew I had to tolerate him if this mission was going to work.
“Yup.” I pretended to be busy with picking at my nails, which were brittle and unpolished.
“Well, how do you feel about going back home to the good old USA?”
“How I feel doesn’t matter. It’s part of the job and I don’t ask questions.”
“I could puke from nerves,” Rabbit revealed. “I’ve been enjoying being an unknown in Paris. New York seems risky.”
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I was just as nervous. I peeked at what appeared to be a series of maps and blueprints he had downloaded onto his computer screen. “So what’s the plan? Motley told me you would know.”
“Cibix is located on Avenue of the Americas. The plan is for us to sneak you inside with a phony employee badge. Then, we get you into the research and development server area and have you smoke the joint. I’ll be guiding you using an earpiece from a car parked around the corner.”
“Hold up,” I demanded. “I am not smoking a building on Avenue of the Americas, and I sure as hell am not blowing up a building in the heart of New York City. I’m not a terrorist, Rabbit.”
“You won’t be blowing anything up with a bomb. You’re going to use an acid pour which will sizzle the servers from the insides out.”
Generation of Liars Page 12
