"And it knows that we know, and on and on," Henry said.
"What are you getting at?" Christie, who seemed to lose patience quickly, asked in a sharp voice.
"I was always there waiting when the person I’d been sent to kill thought he was safest. There were no obstacles. It was easy. Most times, I just walked in, did the job, and walked out. It didn’t matter how much security there was, how many guards, how many precautions had been taken… I always had a way in and a way out, and nobody could stop me."
Christie Seifert actually looked scared for a moment. Or was that eager? "So what do you think we should do?" she asked.
"We already know what we’re doing," Cardinal Roscoe interjected.
Henry ignored him. "If Oracle can predict what you’re going to do, then you have to do something unpredictable. That’s the only thing I can think of that would work."
"How do we do that?" Christie asked. "Oracle knows us better than we know ourselves."
"Besides, it is impossible for human beings to act in a completely random, unpredictable way for any length of time," Cardinal Roscoe said. "We are creatures of habit, ultimately. Eventually a pattern in our behavior emerges and then…"
"There’s something else we’re forgetting here," Tina piped up. They all looked at her expectantly. "One thing I know as a programmer is that you simply cannot account for every potential unknown when writing code. Therefore, there is no way that Oracle can, either. It’s impossible. I’m no expert on A.I. theory, but I do know one thing about computers in general: if it was designed and built by human beings, it’s going to be flawed. Unless Oracle is a divine creation, we have a chance."
"That still doesn’t explain how we can outsmart the most powerful, complex thinking machine in existence," Christie said. "Warts and all."
"We don’t even try to outsmart it," Henry responded. "That was the mistake the others made."
"Then what do we do?"
"Random actions."
They all just looked at him, although Tina was nodding. Henry was secretly pleased that she seemed to be getting his drift here. The others, though…
"Should we roll a pair of dice every time we have to make a decision?" Cardinal Roscoe asked, incredulous.
"Maybe."
"We can’t just decide where to go," Tina said. "If Oracle really is that good-"
"It is," Christie said. "I wrote a piece on it for Time. Oracle has a profile for almost everyone on the planet, and it’s always updating that profile with new information. Every time you use a credit card, make a phone call, send an e-mail, hit a web site…practically everything you do generates some information about you that Oracle can use to add to that profile. I really thought the piece I wrote would create a stir, but it barely even caused a ripple. No one seems to care, despite all the rhetoric about privacy and blah, blah, blah."
She seemed genuinely agitated.
"I say we open the phone book, randomly pick an address, and then go there," Henry said. "Wherever it is, we just go and we deal with whoever’s there when we get there."
"Deal with?" Tina asked.
"Not kill," Henry told her. "Deal with."
"We are not going to force ourselves in someone’s house," Cardinal Roscoe said. "We are not going to get more innocent people involved."
Throughout all this Henry noted that Juan Alonso seemed absorbed in his own thoughts as he stared at Tina. Tina hadn’t noticed yet, or maybe she had…she seemed to radiate in the dress that once belonged to the ex-Mrs. Alonso. She caught Henry looking at her again, and a small smile briefly crossed her face.
"There really aren’t a lot of options here," Christie said. "Let the Church handle it. You might be surprised."
"I doubt it."
"We have resources, too," Cardinal Roscoe told Henry. "We have over a thousand years worth of resources. I daresay the Church’s reach is as far and wide as the U.N.’s. If the Church decides to protect one little girl, I can assure you…she will be protected."
Although he stated this with a calm demeanor and voice, Henry sensed that Cardinal Roscoe was anything but calm. The waiting was getting to him, Henry decided. Waiting for something to happen.
How long had they been at Alonso’s house, anyway? He’d lost track of time. He found a clock on the opposite wall. Eleven o’clock. It was almost dark outside. Time flies, he thought wryly.
Henry did not doubt that whomever had been sent to replace him knew exactly where Samantha Rohde was. They were biding their time, waiting for the prearranged moment to strike, doing everything according to plan. Henry had done it himself so many times before.
The waiting was always the hardest part, although there was a certain Zen-like calming effect to it. But that was different. It was waiting to kill a human being. Waiting for the moment to strike. It wasn’t like this, waiting for an unknown event to occur at an undisclosed time.
They should use the time to make Sam a more difficult target to find, Henry thought.
Outside, a dog started barking. Henry pulled out his gun and went over to Sam.
"What are you doing?" Cardinal Roscoe asked him.
"The dog," Henry said flatly.
"Dogs bark all the time," Christie said.
"Is that your neighbor’s dog?" Henry asked Alonso. Alonso nodded. "Is it normal for it to bark like that?"
Alonso thought about it for a second, then visibly swallowed and shook his head.
"Oh my God," Tina said, almost whispering.
"Turn off the lights," Henry ordered.
No one moved right away, but then Christie Seifert reached over to the light switch nearest her and flicked it off. The overhead light went out, but a lamp in the corner across from the table was still on.
Alonso walked over to it, quickly but steadily, and turned it off.
A light in the front room was still on, but no one moved. Outside, the dog was still barking. To Henry it sounded distinctly like a dog barking at an intruder. It had happened to him often enough in the past. Once, it had bought someone almost twenty-four extra hours of life.
Nobody said a word. Henry listened for any other sounds from outside. All he could hear was the barking dog.
After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time, the doorbell chimed. Alonso looked at Henry, and then the Cardinal, as if unsure of whom to ask for permission to open his own front door. The doorbell chimed again.
"I do not think an assassin would come to the front door and ring the bell," Cardinal Roscoe said.
"You’d be surprised," Henry retorted, but he motioned with his gun for Alonso to go to the front door. "Everyone else stay here," he told the others, then followed Alonso. He stood back a few steps as Alonso unlocked and opened the front door.
The man at the door was a priest. Or, at least he was dressed like a priest. Alonso visibly relaxed as he opened the door wider.
"Welcome, Father," he said.
The priest smiled and stepped across the threshold of Alonso’s house. He started to raise his hand, when suddenly Henry heard the unmistakable cough of a silenced firearm. The priest’s head erupted in a geyser of bright red blood, and his body crumpled immediately to the floor. Henry had his own, silenced, gun out.
Beyond the doorway there was movement, but Henry couldn’t see into the darkness well enough to get a shot.
"Henry!" came a voice from within the darkness. Alonso, wide-eyed, looked at Henry. "Henry!" the voice called again. "There’s supposed to be two of them, Henry! They’re assassins, and they’re here for the girl!" The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
It took a half a second for Henry to absorb the information. He knew the other would be going around to the back of the house, and even as he turned he heard a window break and Sam scream. He ran all the way back to see a man dressed as a priest quickly and smoothly pull himself into the dining room. Henry fired a shot at the man before he even really knew what he was doing. He missed, the bullet splintering the window frame near the ma
n’s head as he tucked and rolled clear. He came up in a crouch scanning for Sam, saw her, spun to get a bead on her, but Henry had him. He couldn’t hesitate; if he did he knew Sam would be dead in an instant. He squeezed the trigger. The would-be assassin took a bullet in the back of the head, and crumpled to the floor before he could get a shot off.
"I’m comin’ in, mate! Don’t shoot me now, okay?" called the familiar voice from the front. Henry looked at Sam and Tina, saw they were frightened but okay, and headed towards the front room again. "Oi! Henry! Here I come!"
Henry didn’t reply. He now remembered that voice. It rang out unmistakably from his past.
From out of the darkness came a man, completely bald, carrying a gun with a bulging silencer on the end of it, like Henry’s. The man stopped at the doorway. He grinned and raised his eyebrows at Henry.
"Remember me, Henry?" Henry just looked at the man. "C’mon now, Henry, surely remember your ol’ mate, Angus Becker. All them years ago…" Angus shook his head. "But it wasn’t really that long ago, was it?"
Henry didn’t know what to say. Ten years ago was a lifetime. A decade without his wife and daughter was an eternity. But, yes, he remembered Angus Becker, a different Angus Becker, though, with hair and without an Australian accent, or whatever that was.
Angus rubbed his free hand over his bald head and grinned. "I guess I’ve changed a bit. Not as much as you, though, Henry. I never would have recognized you if Oracle hadn’t supplied me with a picture." He shook his head. "You were on death’s door back then, weren’t you? It took me a year just to dry you out, and now look at you."
Henry raised his gun, pointed at Becker’s chest. Angus responded by doing the same to Henry.
"What the hell is going on?" Henry asked.
"You tell me, mate," Angus said.
"All right. I’ll tell you that you’re being here is no accident."
"I could say the same about you, couldn’t I?" Angus asked.
"I don’t know. Could you?"
Angus winked at Henry.
"Are you here to kill the girl?" Henry asked him, point blank.
Angus shook his head. "No, Henry. I am not here to kill Samantha Jeannette Rohde." He tilted his head towards the body on the floor. "He was, though. And his buddy. I was sent here to stop them. Go ahead, check inside his coat.”
Henry motioned for Cardinal Roscoe to do it. Roscoe came forward and knelt by the body. He crossed himself, then opened the man’s coat. Yes, there was a gun. He pulled it out, revealing the bulging silencer on the end of it. Before the Cardinal even knew what was happening, Henry reached down and grabbed the gun away from him.
"God in Heaven," Roscoe rasped. "We led him right to her."
"It wasn’t you, Padre," Angus said. "There was nothing you could have done to stop him. That’s why I was sent here. To stop him."
"Who sent you?" Cardinal Roscoe asked him.
"The same what sent Henry. We both do the wet work for Oracle."
"You knew?" Henry asked Angus, narrowing his eyes at him. Becker seemed to get Henry’s meaning. He shook his head.
"No, Henry, I didn’t know. Back then, I didn’t know. I found out only recently, same as you."
"Oracle sent him to kill the girl," Cardinal Roscoe told Angus, nodding his head towards Henry. "Not save her."
"Well, it sent me to save her," Angus replied.
"That doesn’t make any sense." Roscoe said.
Angus shook his head. "No, it doesn’t, does it?" He grinned again, then slowly lowered his gun. "You won’t shoot me, will you, Henry? I mean, we’re on the same side, ain’t we?"
Henry didn’t lower his gun right away. "Are we?" he asked.
He locked his gaze with Becker’s. He could see something in the bald man’s eyes that told him he wasn’t getting the full story…but he could also tell that Angus was telling the truth. He wasn’t there to kill Sam. Henry doubted that Angus was there to save her, though. His instincts told him the truth was somewhere in between.
Meanwhile, Angus might have information about Oracle that would prove useful. Beyond that, they would just have to see.
Chapter 19
At the party, Vincent Waldrup got a call on his cell phone. It was Dex.
"Dude," said Dex, in his electronically masked voice, when Vincent answered the phone.
"What is it, Dex? I’m not in a position to speak openly."
"Some serious stuff here, dude," Dex said.
"Can it wait until tomorrow?"
"Just listen," Dex said, interrupting him. "There is definitely a tremor in the Force."
"Okay." Vincent sighed. "I’m listening."
"Dude… Oracle is, like, totally whack." Vincent frowned.
"I mean totally," Dex continued. "Beyond whack."
"Can you be a little less…technical?" Wadrup asked sarcastically.
"Fragged," Dex said. "Bugged. Bonkers. Nutsoid."
"Are you trying to tell me," Vincent said, lowering his voice, "that Oracle is insane?"
"You got it."
"How do you…? What makes you…?" Vincent wasn’t quite sure he knew the right question. He wandered aimlessly through the house, passing by the U.N. Ambassadors from Kenya, Brazil, Ecuador, Canada, Poland… The pungent odor of cigar smoke was softened by the smooth scent of expensive perfumes on the wives of the mostly male U.N. delegates.
"Dude," Dex said. "Have I ever been wrong?"
Vincent had to admit to himself that no, Dex had never been wrong. Something bothered him about that, but he wasn’t sure why.
"So what am I supposed to do about it?" Vincent asked. "I’m at a party for Christ’s sake."
"A party? What’s the babe factor? Maybe I’ll drop by."
Vincent could almost imagine Dex grinning as he spoke. His mental image of Dex, in spite of the computer-generated image he saw when he talked to Dex via Internet, completely fabricated from his own imagination, was one of a pierced, tattooed, blond spike-haired, goateed, twenty year old punk. He had nothing to base this on, of course, except Dex’s electronically fuzzed-out voice and attitude, and maybe he was slightly influenced by Dex’s digital face, which seemed to change somewhat each time he saw it. His biggest fear was that Dex was actually some pimply faced thirteen year old geek hacking away in his bedroom while Mom and Dad watched the evening news downstairs…news that, unbeknownst to them, their child was intimately associated with on certain occasions.
"There is no babe factor," Vincent said. "It’s all politically connected old men and their face-lifted old wives." Except for me, he thought. He wasn’t exactly young, but his wife wasn’t at the party, either.
And then he spotted Annika Dahl and Yatin Kumar. That gave him an idea.
"Dex," he said. "Tell me, how does this…insanity…manifest itself?"
"I’m not sure," Dex replied, sounding serious all of a sudden. "It looks like it has a split personality, dude. It’s real subtle right now, concentrated in one subroutine coming out of the node in Atlanta."
Vincent stopped. "What did you say? Atlanta?"
"Yeah. There’s a node there, dude."
"I know that."
"Well that’s where this subroutine originated."
"How do you know?" Vincent was suspicious.
"How do I know? Mojo, dude. I hacked the Net address of the node, and then hacked the subroutine spooling out from that address. Freak."
Vincent frowned. Did Dex just call him a freak, or was that just another one of his weird punctuating remarks? He got the impression that Dex did not particularly like him; probably regarded him with disdain as a ‘suit.’ He figured he probably wouldn’t much like Dex if they ever met in person, which he doubted would ever happen. He’d tried on several occasions to find out who Dex was, calling in favors from friends in the FBI and Secret Service. Either they’d not tried very hard to find Dex, which was a distinct possibility, or Dex was very hard to find, also a distinct possibility.
"Oracle is calling in people from a
ll over to go to Atlanta," Dex told him. "Four so far, others are being held in reserve."
"What people?" Vincent asked.
"Beats me. They’re just numbers, dude, but they’re flagged as special or something. The weird thing is, the split personality thing is happening, so the one half is calling certain ones in for one thing, and the other half is calling other ones in to go against them. Like, the left hand and right hand are totally not on the same page. Whatever’s going on, it’s also taking up more and more processing power. The Atlanta node is almost entirely devoted to it already. Won’t be long before it starts to drain processing power from the other nodes. And it looks like it’s just gonna get worse until one side or the other wins."
"Wins?"
"Totally."
"How does one side or the other win?"
An awkward moment of silence from Dex. "I don’t know," Dex said flatly. An alarm bell went off in Vincent’s head. Was Dex lying? Maybe he didn’t really know, but that pause seemed…unnatural, like he was hiding something. Vincent got the distinct impression that, yes, Dex was lying. Dex knew more than he was letting on. He had to. If he knew too much, Vincent realized, something would indeed have to be done about him. Something permanent. Of course, in order to do something to Dex one would have to find him first.
"What do you think is going to happen, Dex?" Vincent asked. "To Oracle, I mean. If this goes on."
He could almost see Dex scratching his head. "Dude, I don’t know."
"Do you think Oracle knows?" asked Vincent.
"If it did, wouldn’t it try to do something about it?"
"Maybe… Maybe it is doing something about it," Vincent said. Oracle would do a self-diagnostic test, wouldn’t it? If it found something wrong, what would it do? It occurred to him that an unstable Oracle would incur close scrutiny by the O.O.C. If they looked too closely, what else might they find? Suddenly he needed a stiff drink. Without bothering to say goodbye, he pressed the END button on his phone. Dahl served only champagne at his parties. That was okay, Vincent had brought along his own flask of brandy. That and a few glasses of the bubbly would more than take the edge off.
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