"I could bring it to your room now...it’s still early for dinner."
"Ransley, I would avoid giving rise to gossip for our peace of mind, better tomorrow at lunch."
"Okay, you're right," Ransley said, disconsolately. "See you tomorrow at 12:30, queue 6. Have a nice evening."
"Perfect, see you tomorrow, bye."
Skylinep92 felt like a recluse, she couldn’t dine out, the gym was located in an area which required special access that she didn’t have and Jago, who could have resolved everything, wasn’t there.
Anaïs began to examine the information sent by Interpol wrinkling her nose as she remembered the scene with Reed and understood perfectly well that everything that arrived to her by that channel, had already been examined and possibly edited.
She opened the file: it was a series of images captured by the cameras of an airport that had been extracted from a search engine, parameterized on the geographic area of Texas-Oklahoma-New Mexico-Arkansas-Louisiana-Colorado, used by the Questlead service. They had a delay of 48 hours and Interpol had received them most probably a couple of hours earlier.
The shots were of a private airport. In the first picture there was a blurry but recognizable Mark Savannah; then Anaïs’ heart leaped into her throat, in the last picture in the background, near a plane, she saw herself clearly visible against the light and identifiable without the need for subsequent processing.
It was Wiley Post and the photographs dated back to the last time she and Mark had met. Without panicking, Anaïs examined every corner of her room minutely and checked with her detector that the ventilation duct system was free of prying eyes and ears, afterwards she sat down on the bed and logged onto the secure line that Savannah had given her.
109
At 07:00 pm local time in Dallas, Mark and Pavel’s devices began receiving the images from the cameras installed on the button of Anaïs’ sweater in Ransley Bain’s office.
Pavel, who was in his bunker laboratory in Sofia, downloaded them onto his system as they arrived, and then he reworked and combined them in order to try to extrapolate the access code.
Unexpectedly, after an hour Mark saw an alert from Anaïs Degann with a file attached:
"Wiley Post cameras, require immediate solution, we still have about 12 hours before Green comes back to his office. Reed deleted the communication under my eyes without reading it, so for the time being he’s not aware of the content."
Savannah opened the file with bated breath and looked at the pictures, he simply hadn’t seen the damn camera and even Anaïs hadn’t noticed it; he looked at the time and immediately thought with horror that Pavel might have gone to class at the university in Sofia, where it was in fact 11:00 in the morning.
He sent the images via Pavel’s secure line with the message:
"She must disappear and also Wiley Post or else they will quickly get to me. The Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport in California has a similar configuration and, seeing Snoopy on the logo, they might think I used one of my tricks. We have less than 12 hours to replace the file on the central system, Green is absent until tomorrow morning and Reed deleted the file before he reviewed it. Put it on my account, I’ll pay for this service out of the package that we have agreed for your support to my operation. Send me an e-mail a.s.a.p., TKS."
Actually, Pavel was at the university and opened the file two hours later; in addition, he replied to Mark only when he was certain he had found a solution.
"QRV? Digitrevenant69."
"QRV." Mark replied. He had been waiting for Pavel’s reply for about four hours, but it seemed to him that more than twice that time had passed.
"I have Bain’s code. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to assemble; he entered it seven times in two hours.
“I replaced Degann. I just have Anna as a subject in my photographic archive, but I have to change her features, it will take me half an hour, then I asked my community on the net for about twenty photos of the Charles M. Schulz taken from various angles. Fortunately I received a positive answer from an affiliate, so it will take about two hours to get the pictures, then I have to rework the whole thing, enter the system, delete the old file, perform the replacement, send it to Degann and erase all traces of Bain. Green is not stupid! If all goes well, we can do it."
"I think we can proceed, there is no alternative and you're the only one able to resolve the situation. In the meantime, I’ll tell Anaïs to delete her files, before she gets confused. As for me, I’ll be available round the clock, I won’t go to sleep until I know the outcome even if you take until morning. Talk to you later, Pavel. Thank you!"
"Catch you later my friend. I’ll check that no one even looks for that file before and during the replacement operations. God, how much I enjoy this stuff! If I can fool Green, I can fool the whole CIA."
"Pavel..."
"I'm just saying...yes, yes…I'm already working on it, don’t panic."
Mark, ended the communication and sent a message to Anaïs.
"Delete the file in your possession, the cavalry is activated. I'll write you tomorrow.
"I’ll stay up,” replied Anaïs, “until you tell me your ghost riders have replaced the file even on the main unit. And who can sleep Mark: if they recognize me, I'm dead."
"I’ll send you a message when the operation is completed. You're going to stay very much alive like on the wall of that hangar…don’t worry," Mark answered seriously.
SkylineP92 opened a chat conversation with Mark; she felt terribly alone and wanted to chat a little bit.
"Do you think it's the moment to fool around? So you remember, you liked that, so why didn’t you tell me?" she wrote to him in no uncertain terms.
"Tell you what?"
"That you were fine with me, hey, we left right away and my legs were still shaking a little."
"I didn't think you were romantic."
"I’m sensitive, Savannah, shove it in your head, even if our business is a piece of shit, it didn’t change me at all...and I felt you."
"I also felt you, Anaïs."
"I’m closing the communication, Mark. We've been online too long, you never know," replied Skylinep92, not giving weight to Savannah’s words.
"I agree. Talk to you later, bye."
"See you," Anaïs replied.
110
"When?” asked a shocked and angry Reed. “So, when was he operated on? Three years ago? But he’s a civilian…bloody hell! In Paris, tonight, so the whole world will know about it, my God what a shitty situation…I would say we have to hold a press conference tomorrow night and communicate that we have the authorization to carry out the transplantation procedure in Europe and that we’re a partner of 15 leading European accredited facilities.
“After that we announce the date of the first shipments and we do it a week earlier than the agreed schedule… of course, five weeks of production…there is no time, unless we act now, we risk the spotlight falling on us…instead if we proceed, they will leave us in peace…I'm glad that you agree with me Michael…where will the asshole be locked up?
“Very well. New York will get tough on him…now I’ll inform Bain and I’ll leave a message for Green, he’s out of the office, on vacation, from this afternoon…no, he'll come back directly tomorrow morning. Goodnight Michael."
Reed was purple in the face and nervously dialed Bain’s office number.
"Ransley, another problem. I'm sorry, but tonight you'll have to skip your herbal tea, I'm waiting for you in my office now, thanks."
He didn’t leave Bain time to answer, he immediately hung up and dialed Green’s cell number.
"Jago? Hi. Tomorrow night we have to announce the European collaboration and move up the first shipment of tissue and scaffold by a week…don't interrupt me, bloody hell! We have another fucking problem, I'm not going to tell you about it now because I have to inform Bain first. Can we move up the shipment? At the moment I don’t give a shit about the audit, you obviously have to go on hop
ing to understand why we’re in this fucking situation. Can you make it or not, for fuck's sake? Very well…and what about logistics? Thank goodness! Bain will hold a press conference but he will need the reference data…Perfect, if you can deliver by 11:30 am we won’t be late. See you tomorrow, Jago…as soon as I see you, I'll update you on everything. Thank you, sweet dreams."
Meanwhile Ransley Bain was knocking on Reed’s office door.
"Come in, Ransley!"
"Good evening, Colonel. What’s happened now?"
"A civilian, this time a civilian, Ransley. What a mess!"
"A patient of "Transtem 1.1"?"
"Yes, damn it, and most importantly, an airline pilot for American Airlines. He took off from Paris, en route to New York. He ignored procedures, notices, the control tower, he decided to squeeze into a storm cell just after take-off. He terrified passengers because he stalled the plane and then regained control of the plane while mumbling incoherent sentences like: "It's time to rebel against the system, let's destroy them all!” Then the plane was struck by lightning, causing damage to the fuselage, they had to send out two fighters and force him to land.
“He was immediately taken into custody by the French military police and is now flying to New York handcuffed."
"We’re in free fall, sir. Has Green discovered anything?"
"Nothing new since our last meeting. Tomorrow, late afternoon, you’ll organize a press conference and state that Biosketch Technologies Inc. is ready to ship the first tissues and scaffolds to Europe, as well as having obtained the approval of the Scientific Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) and that of the EMA (European Medicines Agency) for the marketing authorization.
“We’re, you know, now a partner of fifteen major hospitals and research centers in Europe with regard to transplants. Green has confirmed that they can speed up the shipments, can you confirm the same thing?"
"Yes, it can be done, even if a minimum production downtime would be enough to stop us meeting the deadlines."
"By 11:30 am Jago will give you the necessary data for the speech, so you'll be able to prepare yourself properly. Now call Catherine Leed, she’s the only one able to organize a similar event on the fly. Tell her that the location must be public, and possibly in Dallas, like the last time. I'm sorry to keep you up so late. If Catherine busts your balls, I authorize you to hand her $ 10,000."
"I understand very well. I'll call Cathy immediately, it's not so late. I hope she replies Colonel. I’ll call you in an hour for an update."
111
It was 4:00 in the morning in the New Mexico desert, when Anaïs received a message from Savannah with the attached file that carried the same hour of the one she had deleted. She had dozed off several times and several times, she had woken up to think about and develop an alternative plan in case they were not able to change the images.
"Replacing performed, deleted all links in memory concerning the previous file on the system and the central unit didn’t track us, we’ll talk later."
Anaïs opened the file relieved and looked at the pictures: instead of her image she saw a dark-haired lady in a tracksuit that looked ready to jog rather than to carry out the routine check before boarding the plane and she wondered if that insignificant woman was a friend of Savannah’s.
The airport was changed, though actually it was the same view of the first image that she had received; the sign of the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport was crisp and clear.
She decided that she would send the file to Green around 9:00 am, half an hour before their early morning meeting.
Tired but sleepless, she turned on the television to listen to the latest news.
The sudden and inexplicable fit of madness of an American Airlines pilot in Paris, who had dived into a dangerous thunderstorm cell with a plane after take-off with consequences to the aircraft and to twenty passengers who had been injured as a result of the turbulence, continued to be repeated in the news. The causes of the insane act were not yet known.
Initially the authorities had thought it might be a terrorist attack, but the testimony of some of the passengers had confirmed that the man spoke in an aggressive tone, speaking in incoherent and incomprehensible sentences.
Anaïs’ immediately noted the similarity to the incidents Mark had told her involving the transplant soldiers. She took note of the pilot’s name and then she barely had time to turn off the television before she had asleep, fully dressed on the bed in her room.
Half asleep, Anaïs seemed to hear a cell phone ringing, she opened one eye, then the other, and looked up. It actually was her phone. She reached out and pressed the phone to her ear.
"Hello?" she said sleepily.
"What are you doing? You're still dressed in an evening gown? Are you spending your holidays right here?"
“Green? Fuck you!"
"Get your ass moving, beautiful. It’s 9:30 am, and you should already be in my office. I have an emergency, so I can only give you a slot of half an hour. No appointment with the Colonel, he flew to the Pentagon. I’m in charge and I decide."
"Uh, the strategist is here…wow! I have to eat something or else I’ll get irritated..."
"Forget about going to the cafeteria, you don’t have time. I'll ask them to bring something to my office. What would you like?"
“Cappuccino with a chocolate muffin, the minimum to get going. If you like, add a couple of pancakes and..."
"Get up and walk, possibly to my office. You’ll be very sexy with that sleepy face."
Anaïs, with a sleepy face and her hair in war stance, entered Green’s office just six minutes later and sat down in front of him at his desk.
"Today there will be a press conference, within five weeks we’ll export the first tailor-made tissues and the scaffolds to Europe for transplants performed in collaboration with the 15 Transplant Centers with whom we have entered into partnerships in Europe. A real success!"
"Congratulations! I wasn’t aware of the press conference, the Colonel didn’t tell me anything yesterday."
"Lately he’s been very busy. As you know, today he went to the Pentagon to meet Mitchell."
"Problems?"
"Routine, but Mitchell moved up the appointment."
"I understand."
"Why didn’t you send me the file from Interpol yesterday?"
"I had some problems in the late afternoon. I was sick, a very violent menstrual colic, that's why I was still sleeping. I intended to send the file to you early this morning."
Anaïs knew that mentioning a question so feminine would embarrass him and he wouldn’t ask for details, let alone dream of checking.
Skylinep92 sent him the file and they checked it together, while she ate the chocolate muffin and two pancakes with maple syrup. Afterwards they discussed the status of the situation and she told him what she had found in Langley during the search in the archives.
"It would seem that Savannah killed Richard Reed because Reed had discovered him in Afghanistan while dealing with the opium merchants, a nasty business when you consider that at the same time he’s the hero of the "Uday, who runs fast" Mission. He's still in the United States because he can’t leave. He’s like a hounded animal, and I'm going to catch the bastard."
"I would say that at this point you can go to California, you'll leave today, making the first part of the journey with Bain because I have no other transportation available. You’ll arrive in Dallas and from there you’ll organize your next steps yourself," Jago said with a slight sigh of relief, which made Anaïs realize how inconvenient her presence was for Biosketch Technologies Inc. on this occasion.
"Why can't I leave tomorrow after having spoken to the Colonel?"
"No, you have to leave today. I’m not sure the Colonel is going to come back tonight, and you cannot waste any more time."
"I'll rent a Cessna in Dallas. Savannah is shrewd, you make me work alone and it’s better that I land in private airports as I’ll b
e carrying all the available artillery with me. Have the weapons delivered to my room, please, and I’d like a pair of bladed weapons and a set of shuriken, thanks."
"Okay, but now I have to go. I'll arrange the trendy accessories you have requested," said Jago in an absent manner.
"But you're upset. What's happened?" asked Anaïs.
"I have five weeks to ship the first lot to Europe! Yesterday I thought I had at least one more week, if something goes wrong there’s not even one day of contingency."
"And why did they move up the delivery?"
"We’re in the middle of an election campaign, remember?"
"Ah…yeah."
The time was up and Anaïs said goodbye to Green and went to the cafeteria to order two bagels with salmon to eat before departing.
When she returned to her room half an hour later, she found that three hard suitcases had been left on the bed. She opened them, and examined and checked the weapons.
She saw with satisfaction that Green had also equipped her with a dagger and a marine combat knife that she liked very much, plus two sets of three shuriken of different blades and different sizes.
At noon she went to pick up the bagels, she bought some orange juice and returned to the room to eat and prepare her suitcase.
Then she called Ransley Bain:
"Hello, Ransley. I just wanted to tell you that I'll see you on the runway at 1:00 pm. Could you bring my sweater with you, please?"
"Hello! Green just informed me that you were coming with me. They really don’t want you here, huh? I'm happy to travel with you…at least I get to see you."
"You’re always polite, Ransley, I think you're the only one left on this planet, Green and Reed are two boars in comparison!"
Black Hawk Day Rewind: An action packed spy thriller (Mark Savannah Espionage Series Book 1) Page 31
