Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Utopia Experiment (A Covert-One novel)

by Kyle Mills

  75

  Near Vientiane

  Laos

  CHRISTIAN DRESNER BACKED AWAY from the screen depicting Smith crawling toward Javier de Galdiano, whom he clearly didn’t yet realize was dead. Zellerbach was still on the other terminal carrying out his attack on individual components of a network that extended to every corner of the world. And Randi Russell had her back pressed to a low steel wall, occasionally shooting blindly over it in what was looking more and more like what it was: a last stand.

  He turned toward a blank wall and activated his Merge’s video capability, pulling up feeds from public webcams all over the world. They hovered in front of him bordered by two bar graphs, one in blue depicting the total number of people currently online and the other in red representing those targeted. He focused on an image of a busy street in the financial district of London, following the well-dressed people rushing along the sidewalks and the vehicles choking the street.

  The confident stride of a man approaching a crosswalk faltered and Dresner watched him grimace in pain and grab his right shoulder. A woman next to him reached out a helping hand but was unable to prevent him from collapsing to his knees. She started to call for help but then fell silent when she saw that the man she was hovering over was only one of many.

  Cabs continued to move through the streets, their drivers not heavily targeted by LayerCake, but a bulky Mercedes in their midst suddenly swerved and jumped the curb, scattering people Dresner’s system had determined were innocent.

  He kept his breathing even, trying not to think of his failures, of Smith and Russell, of the future. The ramifications of what was happening were impossible to determine and would have to be allowed to unfold over the coming months and years.

  For now, there was only this moment. A moment when people died, when children were orphaned, when industries, governments, and militaries wavered. A dangerous and solemn moment.

  Another car veered toward the sidewalk but then managed to correct and roll safely to a stop. Dresner took a hesitant step forward, though the motion had no effect on the image being projected on his mind. The people lying on the concrete weren’t moving but also didn’t have the profound stillness of death. He’d watched this play out in the North Korean facility more times than he could remember and it always followed the same pattern. Something was wrong.

  The red bar hovering to his right began to flicker and a moment later disappeared.

  De Galdiano.

  The Spaniard had full access to LayerCake and had used that access to modify the judgment criteria into something no one would match.

  Dresner shut down the video feed and rushed to his terminal, but when he reached for it an intense pain in his right arm stopped him. The confusion he felt was quickly dispelled by a crushing tightness in his chest and a sudden inability to breathe.

  De Galdiano hadn’t changed the Merge’s criteria to target no one, he realized. He’d changed it to target its creator.

  The room began to swim around him and he reached for his Merge, fumbling the power button with a thumb quickly losing sensation. His legs gave out and he hit the floor, still clawing desperately at his unit.

  The pain continued to grow and he abandoned his efforts in favor of trying to deactivate the subroutine. Unable to remain on his knees, he fell to his side, concentrating on the familiar human outline icon fading in and out of existence in his peripheral vision. The launch button he’d used only moments ago now glowed with the red letters “abort.”

  It pulsed irregularly, keeping time with his dying heart for a moment, and then went black.

  76

  Near Granada

  Spain

  JON!” RANDI SCREAMED OVER the sound of bullets hammering the metal wall behind her.

  De Galdiano was dead and Smith looked like he might be too, lying partially on top of the Spaniard with his hand on the keyboard.

  A shot, louder than the rest, sounded and she threw herself forward as a round penetrated the steel and sprayed her back with shrapnel. It had just been a matter of time before security found something with enough heft to blast through the barrier, but she’d been hoping for a little more foot dragging on their part.

  Randi looked at what was left of the windows on the far side of the room—not much more than a few loose shards clinging to the frame. A hot breeze blew through them, strong enough to swirl the smoke hanging in the air but not enough to dissipate the overwhelming stench of gunpowder. Zellerbach was lying on his stomach still absorbed by his keyboard, though there was little point to what he was doing anymore. Not that she saw any reason to tell him that. Better to just let him stay lost in his digital world until one of the Dresner’s storm troopers got lucky and took his head off.

  She scanned right again, finding it much harder than it should have been to look at Smith. His plan had been too convoluted from the start—an ungodly Hail Mary with a thousand paths to disaster and only one path to success. But they’d been in similar jams before and somehow always managed to walk away.

  Not this time.

  She stared at him for too long, eyes clouding with a sensation so unfamiliar that it took a moment for her to decipher it. Tears.

  Pull it together, Randi!

  She forced her left brain back into gear and calculated that she had only one round remaining. Options for survival were limited—but limited wasn’t the same thing as nonexistent.

  First order of business was to get Smith’s gun—he still had a full clip. With his body stacked on top of de Galdiano’s they would make a functional shield that she could drag along with her to the shattered windows. The building’s facade was too featureless to climb, but it was possible she could shoot out the windows of the floor below and swing down.

  Even if all that worked, her chances of getting out of the building alive were still slim. At least it would be a running fight, though. A hell of a lot better than lying around waiting to catch a bullet.

  She felt uncharacteristically sluggish as she moved forward. It was easy to ignore the burning wounds in her back, but ignoring the image of Smith lying so still in front of her was less so. She’d lost friends and team members before. Why did this feel so different?

  The steel behind her took another hit from the big-caliber weapon security had found and a pile of soccer balls in front of her burst and scattered around the room. The sudden chaotic motion created the illusion of Smith’s head moving. Or maybe it wasn’t the soccer balls at all—maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see. Randi blinked hard, trying to clear her vision. Her mind wasn’t normally prone to playing tricks and now wasn’t the time for it to start.

  But then his chest suddenly expanded and he rolled off de Galdiano onto the blood-soaked carpet. She froze, staring at him for a moment before looking up at the one surviving monitor bolted near the ceiling. It took a moment to make sense of the image made hazy by the smoke, but finally she managed to combine the shapes and colors into something coherent: Christian Dresner facedown on the floor.

  Bullets continued to hiss overhead and security kept punching through the steel wall with their goddamn elephant gun, but all that seemed to fade away for a moment. Jon was alive and they’d done it. They’d actually pulled it off.

  The moment of elation wasn’t particularly well reasoned, she knew—her chances of survival had actually just taken a turn for the worse. After his partial heart attack, she’d be lucky if Smith could operate at half speed. And he was almost certainly going to frown on her plan to use him as a human shield. But why question the sudden surge in her mood? Better to just enjoy it while it lasted.

  She slithered forward and rolled over de Galdiano’s body, landing on her back next to a very confused Smith.

  “You got him, Jon! Dresner’s dead. But we will be too unless—”

  A gun appeared over the steel wall and she aimed at it, waiting for the top of the guard’s head to appear before firing her last round. It got close enough to make him drop behind cover again but
confirmed her initial impression that the manufacturer had exaggerated the accuracy of her weapon.

  She shoved Smith onto his stomach and pulled the pistol from his waistband, then started dragging him toward the empty window frames at the back of the room. There wasn’t much time. If one of the security men had made it to the wall, the others weren’t going to be far behind. And when they all got into position, they’d jump up in unison and spray the entire office. Game over.

  “Marty!” she shouted as Smith came around enough to start providing some of his own propulsion. “Get off that damn computer and go to the windows. We’re leaving!”

  He ignored her and she swore under her breath, knowing that she’d have to go back for him. There was no time for this crap.

  Smith’s eyes had cleared by the time they made it to the windows and he grabbed her arm when she started back for Zellerbach. He didn’t seem to be able to speak, and instead motioned toward the edge of the floor where it dropped to the parking lot below. She leaned out, careful not to cut herself on the glass still clinging to the frame, and immediately understood what he was trying to communicate. The building’s facade was even smoother than she’d anticipated—making getting to the floor above or below unlikely for her and virtually impossible for the two men she was saddled with.

  Another face appeared over the wall and she fired at it, but this time the man got a few rounds off first, taking out the leg of a pinball machine only inches from Zellerbach’s head. Randi looked around for anything they could use, but there was nothing. With more time, they could probably string together some cables, but time was something they didn’t have. She looked over at Smith, hoping for one of his inspired plans, but got just a smile and a shrug.

  “I’m in!” Zellerbach shouted, and a moment later the sprinklers in the ceiling were dowsing them with frigid water.

  “You get ’em, Marty,” Randi said, appreciating the effort. With a little luck, a few of the sons of bitches who were about to kill them would go home with nasty colds.

  “I have access to security’s personnel files!”

  She fired at a man sprinting for the barrier while Smith crawled toward a basketball goal and pulled it over, providing them with cover that was probably more psychological than real.

  “Give ’em all a pay cut, Marty!” she said, opting not to bother with the few visible inches of a man’s back as he ran from right to left across some cubicles.

  “How many rounds left?” Smith said, speaking for the first time since he’d revived.

  “Not many. Doesn’t matter, though. Can’t hit the broad side of a barn with this thing.”

  Randi tensed when someone shouted orders for the final assault, but instead of the rush of armed men she expected, everything just went silent.

  She kept her gun leveled at the steel wall and Smith rolled to the edge of the basketball goal to spot for her. But there was nothing. No security forces pouring into the office, no barked orders, no gunshots. Just the sound of the wind coming through the empty window panes.

  Zellerbach slid his keyboard away and stood, putting a hand up to block a sprinkler spraying in his face.

  “Marty!” Smith shouted. “Get the hell down!”

  He ignored the order and instead stepped gingerly through he broken glass at his feet. “I hate this place. Let’s go home.”

  “Marty!” Randi cautioned, trying to cover the man, but still finding no targets.

  “Don’t be scared,” Zellerbach said, heading for the door. “It turns out that the entire security detail loved dachshunds and hated their mothers.”

  Epilogue

  Prince George’s County, Maryland

  USA

  JON SMITH EASED THROUGH the gate of the Anacostia Yacht Club, enjoying the illusion of calm. Tiny snowflakes drifted through the empty branches of trees, the car he was driving was rented, not stolen, and Randi was sitting quietly in the passenger seat trying not to rip out the stitches he’d put in her back.

  They came over a small rise and he leaned a little closer to the windshield, examining the car parked in front of Fred Klein’s office: a 1968 Triumph.

  He pulled up and stepped out, barely noticing the icy wind penetrating his jacket. It was stunning—a professional restoration that had virtually nothing in common with the hack job he’d done on the one Whitfield wrecked. Reluctant to touch the flawless paint and gleaming chrome, he crouched and looked through the side window at an equally stunning interior. A set of keys dangled from the ignition.

  “Fred wanted to show his appreciation,” Randi said, coming up behind him. “He asked me what you would want and I figured this was it.”

  “He asked me the same thing about you,” Smith said, going around to the front and admiring the reflection of the clouds in the hood.

  “And what did you say?”

  “Deuce Brennan.”

  A cruel smile spread across her lips. “You know me so well.”

  * * *

  YOU DON’T LOOK TOO MUCH the worse for wear considering the incredible disaster you’ve created,” Maggie said as they entered the office.

  The comment hit Smith harder than was intended. He hadn’t slept much since Granada and didn’t expect to anytime soon. The toll of the plan he’d come up with had been terrible. And casualty estimates just kept climbing.

  Klein appeared in the doorway. “I’m glad you’re here. Come in.”

  He helped Randi with her chair before slipping behind his desk and lighting a pipe. Quiet fans started automatically, pulling the smoke into vents before it could drift out to the firmly anti-tobacco Maggie Templeton.

  “So you’re both all right?”

  “Nothing permanent,” Smith said. “The car’s phenomenal, Fred. Thank you.”

  He gave a barely perceptible nod.

  “How are you doing?” Randi said. “Damage control can’t be easy on this.”

  “No, it’s pretty much a catastrophe on every level.”

  “How many?” Smith asked.

  “I don’t think the number’s importa—”

  “How many, Fred?”

  He frowned and took another pull on his pipe. Reports about what had happened were dominating virtually every news outlet on the planet but solid numbers were hard to come by.

  “We’ve gone a little north of three thousand worldwide. Mostly people with preexisting heart conditions. You can’t blame yourself for that, Jon. Without you, it would have been a hell of a lot worse.”

  It felt like a rationalization. Three thousand people were dead including nine members of Congress, four foreign leaders, and countless financial people. Ironically, the world’s soldiers hadn’t suffered too badly due to their higher-than-average level of fitness.

  “Have you figured out how you’re going to handle this thing?” Randi said.

  Klein let out a long breath. “It’s complicated. Dresner Industries has recalled all the Merges and is headed for bankruptcy. We’ll support the buybacks and use LayerCake to find any units still out there. The goal is to account for every one but that’s probably unrealistic. As far as a public story goes, we’re still trying to come up with something credible enough to convince people that this was an accident. Fortunately, the media seem content to fan the hysteria and don’t seem to be looking into the common thread connecting all the people who were killed. In the end, I think we’ll be able to make it go away. But it isn’t going to be easy.”

  “And the technology goes away, too,” Randi said, not bothering to hide her pleasure at the thought. “Permanently.”

  Klein didn’t respond, deferring to Smith who had been put in charge of a highly classified task force studying that very question.

  “The hardware is easy to replicate and while the public can’t access LayerCake anymore, its core is still running in Spain. The key to the technology, though, is Dresner’s algorithm—basically a Rosetta stone that translates machine code into the language of the mind. Without that, we can’t make any of it work.”<
br />
  “Can you get to that algorithm?” Randi said.

  “I don’t think so. It all comes back to the same catch-22: In order to access Dresner’s operating system, we need to know how Merge communicates with the brain—”

  “And in order to figure out how the Merge communicates with the brain, you need access to Dresner’s operating system,” Randi said, finishing his thought.

  “Exactly. It’d probably be easier to just reinvent the technology than to crack his encryption. So we’re focusing on that—talking to the people involved in development, going through records. But it’s going to take decades. And that’s only if we can figure out how to get the North Koreans to cooperate.”

  “Which so far doesn’t seem likely,” Klein said.

  Smith couldn’t shake a deep sense of disappointment despite everything that had happened. “It was such an incredible technology. And if Dresner’d had another fifty years, he might have actually done it. He might have perfected humanity.”

  Klein dragged thoughtfully on his pipe. “The perfection of our species…It’s an endless historical theme, isn’t it? Eugenics, communism, fascism, genocide, and now this. Maybe we’re not supposed to be perfect.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Randi said. “What the hell would I do with my life if everyone spent their mornings dreaming up new ways to help their fellow man?” She winced in pain as she adjusted her position in the chair. “And speaking of what I’m going to do with my life, there’s the matter of my reward for all wonderful work I did on this.”

  Klein reached into his drawer and slid a thin manila envelope across the desk. “According to our sources, Brennan was recently seen in a small coastal town in Chile.”

  “Chile,” she said, that disturbing smile playing at her lips again. “I could use a little sun.”

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