by Blake Banner
“Jerry and I both worked at QPS…”
I frowned. The name meant something to me, but she went on before I could think about it.
“We were developing software for a device that can interface between the human brain and various different IT and robotic systems.”
I nodded. “I’ve seen this on TV. It’s used for prosthetic arms and hands.”
She nodded, then shrugged. “Amongst other things. It can also be used to communicate with computers, and enable computers to talk to each other. If you can interface with a powerful computer that has the capability of communicating with other computers, you effectively turn the whole network into a cybernetic organism controlled by your brain. The potential is vast. You could take control of satellites, space shuttles, banking systems…”
“And this is what you made?”
She laughed. “No, we are some way off yet, but what’s in the box is a prototype. If the Russians got hold of it and reverse engineered it…”
I scowled. “And you were planning to auction this? Are you out of your mind?”
“No! Of course we weren’t, Lacklan!” She put her hands to her head. “Jerry had this insane idea. If we offered it for auction but remained anonymous, then we could sell the highest bidder a dud, bank the money in an offshore numbered account and make a fortune, without ever putting the homeland at risk. He had the whole thing worked out and tied up in bows.”
“That has to be the stupidest idea I ever heard in my life.”
“I agree, and you don’t need to rub it in. I told him it was crazy and I told him he was going to get us both killed, but he was…” She stopped, wiped her eyes and sniffed. “He was Jerry. He thought he was immortal and indestructible. He had a huge IQ and he was sure he could outsmart everybody. It took Gregor less than a day to persuade him to go to the casino, find out who he was, and tell him that if he went to auction, he would gut him like a fish.”
“So who else did Jerry contact?”
“Nobody, as far as I know.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, I told her, “The CIA are in Freeport for the auction.”
She sagged. “I guess Jerry must have contacted them, then. I don’t know. Gregor scared the hell out of us and we panicked. We were sure that when we handed the NPP over, he would just kill us. Especially when he told us the arrangement for the handover. So when I reached out to you, I guess Jerry reached out to the CIA. He wasn’t a great communicator. He just went ahead and did things, and didn’t always tell me what he was doing.”
I thought for a while. I’d been watching the gauges. I asked her, “Have you any idea where that house was?”
“The one we just came from?”
“Yes, the one where they were holding you.”
“Yeah. It was about two hundred and fifty miles south of Freeport. We made the journey in just over an hour and forty-five minutes, cruising at a hundred and forty MPH. Why?”
I looked at her curiously. “Not a lot of people would notice a thing like that when they’ve just been abducted.”
She shrugged. “That kind of information can save your life when you’ve just been abducted. Why are you asking?”
“Yeah,” I said, studying her face. “And you’d know that, being a software developer.” She ignored the irony. I looked back at the gauges. “I think one of the slugs might have damaged the fuel tank, we’re losing fuel faster than we should be. I don’t think we’re going to make Freeport.”
Realization of what that meant began to dawn on her. “Will we at least get out of Mexico?”
“Yeah, of course. We must have been just inside the border, east of Matamoros. We’re already over U.S. waters, but I’ll have to call the coast guard, get them to come and rescue us. You can be pretty sure they’ll notify Rand—that’s the guy from Central Intelligence, he’ll want to talk to us, to you in particular.”
She nodded and was quiet for a bit. Eventually, she said, “I understand. It was never our intention to sell government secrets, Lacklan. That’s why I asked you for help, and why Jerry contacted the CIA. You do understand that, don’t you, Lacklan?”
I grunted. “I understand that it’s the story you’re telling me now, Emily. It sounds plausible and I want to believe you. But the jury is out until I get some proof that you’re telling me the truth.” I turned to look her in the face. She held my eye. “Lying comes just a little to easy to you. It’s like your go-to response to any situation, and I am not convinced you’ve told me the whole story, let alone the truth. You’re not just a software developer. You have skills you don’t learn at software development school.”
She didn’t answer and we lapsed into silence. I kept my eye on the fuel gauge and after a time, I saw it slip below the half way mark. Emily was staring out the side window at the lights along the coast. Up ahead I saw a bright, luminous cluster. She pointed to it.
“That must be Corpus Christi. Can’t we land there?”
I smiled. “You have a talent for suddenly disappearing. I figure you, in Corpus Christi, with me looking like this, in a plane that’s registered to a Russian mobster… I can think of any number of ways you could use that set up to weave an interesting story and disappear again.”
“I don’t want to disappear, Lacklan. I want to get the NPP to the authorities, clear my name and get Gregor off my back.”
“Good.” I managed a bruised, swollen smile. “In that case, we’ll ditch in about an hour, about fifty miles outside Freeport. It could be a long night. To pass the time, you might want to think about telling me the rest of your story.”
She sat and observed me for a long time while the engine droned and the ocean crept slowly beneath us. She observed me, but she didn’t say anything. After a bit, she looked away, at the lights of Corpus Christi inching by. We flew on in silence. The moon, having reached its zenith, now slipped a little lower, but aside from that, and the slow procession of lights along the coast, little seemed to change outside the cabin, giving the illusion that we were motionless in space. But what did change was the full level, and as the tank approached empty, I pulled my cell from my pocket and instead of calling the Coast Guard, I called Rand.
He answered immediately.
“Lacklan, I’ve been wondering where you were.”
“If I had a dollar for every time somebody said that to me.”
“I bet. Where are you?”
“About to ditch in the Gulf. I figure we’re about fifty miles southwest of Freeport, on a direct trajectory from the beach east of Matamoros. We’re in a de Havilland Otter.”
“How very interesting of you. When you say, ‘we’…?”
“Emily is with me.”
“Of course she is. And you would like me to come and get you.”
“No, I’d like you to send the Coast Guard to get us. Let’s not complicate things, Rand. I called you as a gesture of good will. Play nice.”
“Feel like telling me what you were doing at Matamoros?”
“You mean apart from wiping out fourteen of Gregor Ustinov’s men?”
“You made your point, Lacklan. You’re a badass. I’m terrified of you and I will play nice. What were you doing down there?”
“Just send me the Coast Guard and we’ll talk when we get back. I’m sending you my location.”
I hung up and shortly after that, the engine began to stutter and we began the gradual descent into blackness. As we came lower, the stuttering stopped and the engine died, though the sensation of speed increased. It was impossible to see what we were speeding toward, because below us, there was nothing but darkness. All I could do was watch the altimeter. When it told me we were a few hundred feet off the surface, by the limpid light of the moon, I began to detect small white crests and turquoise troughs in the inky ocean. And then, quite suddenly, we were racing over the waves, there was a thud and great plumes of spray exploded all around us. We slowed gradually and finally came to a halt.
Then there was silenc
e.
After a few minutes, Emily asked me, “Will I go to prison?”
I moved around in my seat so my back was against the door and I could look at her. She was exquisite. Not beautiful in the way a supermodel is, but delightful to look at. I tried to imagine her after fifteen years in prison. It wasn’t nice.
“That’s the least of your worries, frankly, Emily. The way things stand right now, you’ll be lucky to make it to a trial.”
“What do you mean?”
“You just heard me warn a senior government agent to back off. Right now, you have the Russian GRU, the Russian Mafia, the CIA and God knows what other government agencies all really pissed at you. And I would say that the two things they all have in common are that they want the NPP, and they’d be very happy to send you on a six foot holiday to get it. As things stand, fifteen to life is the best outcome you can hope for.”
She gazed out of the windshield at the golden path the moon was laying across the sea toward us. It looked beautiful, but I knew well that moonlit paths always lead you astray. They always lead to darkness.
Fourteen
She looked weary. She rubbed her face with her hands and ran her fingers through her hair. Outside, I could hear the wet lap of the waves against the floats. She said:
“I don’t know what you want from me, Lacklan. I’ve come clean, I’ve told you the truth. What else can I do? What’s the point in threatening me with death and prison?”
I nodded. “I used to have an aunt, my mother’s sister. My mother is English and her sister lived in a small village near Oxford, in a pretty cottage with a rose garden out front and a big lawn out back, with a pond and a weeping willow. She was a sweet, kind woman and whenever people were in trouble, they would always go to her for help and advice. She was that kind of woman, you know? She was always smiling and had big, rosy cheeks, and she would always tell people the same thing: trust the Universe—Universe with a capital ‘U’—trust the Universe and everything will work out.
“When I was twelve, and I was beginning to have problems with my father, we had a chat and she told me the same thing: trust the Universe. So I asked her, ‘Is this the same universe where power is gained through violence and eighty percent of murders are committed by people who love each other? The same one that created ebola, leprosy and tapeworms? Is this the same universe where life is designed so that living creatures have to eat each other in order to survive? The same universe where, as often as not, the animal that gets eaten is still alive?”
She stared at me like I had just farted loudly in the presence of the First Lady. “What a horrible thing to do. Why did you do that? What did she say? I hope she slapped you ’round the back of the head!”
“I agree. I had no right to destroy her faith, however absurd it was, especially as I had nothing to replace it with. She was very upset. She stopped giving people that piece of advice, and about a year later, she got cancer of the liver and died. I always felt bad about that.”
“Why are you telling me this horrible story?”
“Because sometimes, the only way to get out of a really ugly situation is to recognize just how fucking ugly it really is. If we have hospitals and welfare systems today, it’s not because people prayed for them or trusted the ‘Universe’, it’s because three hundred and fifty years ago, a bunch of guys in England came up with a thing called empiricism and said, ‘Hey, it’s not God, it’s gravity.’”
“Are we done with the lecture?”
“Maybe. You tell me. We have a little more than half an hour. Are you going to start getting real or are you going to keep telling me to trust the Universe?”
“Jesus! You are one persistent pain in the ass!”
“You’re not the first person in the world to tell me that, though often ‘persistent’ is replaced by something shorter, with fewer syllables. My aunt, after she had turned to gin and marijuana to dull her existential angst, used to call me…”
“I get it!
“…a loathsome pain in the ass.”
“I get it.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Nobody. Me.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s true.”
“The Company won’t ask nicely. If you want my protection, you have to come clean. Who do you work for?”
“Nobody—anymore…”
“Stop playing games, Emily. We are running out of time. Who did you work for?”
“QPS.”
“Who, or what, is QPS?”
“Was. QPS was a high security facility. Ostensibly, it was a software research and development company, contracted to the government. In reality, it was part of the military industrial complex, answering directly to the Pentagon.”
“What was your role there?”
“I was senior management, and I was directly in charge of developing the NPP.”
This finally had a definite ring of truth about it. “What happened?”
She gave her head several little shakes, then shrugged. “That’s the thing. I don’t know. Neither Jerry nor I had any idea. In fact, nobody seemed to have any idea. No explanation was given and when we asked, we were blanked.” She raised her hands and dropped them in her lap in a gesture of helplessness. “One day, we turned up for work and there was an unscheduled meeting of all the senior management. We were informed that the company was closing. No reason was given. Nothing. We were just told to pack up and leave within two days. Our contracts were terminated summarily and we were given a substantial redundancy package, but in exchange, we had to sign an undertaking not to seek legal redress. That was it. End of story.”
“So you and Jerry decided to take the NPP with you.”
She took a deep breath, held it and frowned out the windshield. The horizon was turning grainy. “It was kind of weird…”
“What was?”
She bit her lip and shifted her eyes to study my face, like she was wondering whether to tell me. “There was a lot of confusion. It was like, one day we were this slick, well organized corporation and the next day, we were a shambles. And, get this, they had invested millions, millions into our project, but nobody asked us for it. We were instructed, the whole company was instructed, not just us, to hand over all research and research materials to our senior supervisors.” She gave a small laugh. “But I was the senior supervisor, and all our research was digitalized. There was practically nothing on paper. So there was practically nothing to hand over.
“Me and Jerry discussed it on the second night. I was cagey but he was gung-ho, typical Jerry. He just put the damned thing in his pocket and walked out with it. Nobody said a damned thing to him. We were stunned. It was like they didn’t know what research was going on there, or what they even had. We were kind of reeling. Holy shit! You know? We just walked out of a government facility with a multi-million dollar project in our pocket, and nobody said a damned thing to us! More than that, Lacklan, nobody even seemed aware that the project existed.”
“Until later.”
She nodded. “Until later, after Jerry had offered it to Gregor.”
“So you were planning to auction it.”
“Look, Lacklan, sincerely, we didn’t know what the hell to do with it. The government didn’t seem to know they even had the damn project. I told Jerry we should wait till the dust had settled and then contact the Department of Defense anonymously. But I already told you, he was rash and reckless and he was in a hurry. He thought the quickest way of getting the government to notice us was to offer it to the Russians.”
“He may have had a point.”
A sudden sadness clouded her eyes. “Yeah, but that point cost him his life. Worse.”
“So what about all the research that went into the project?”
“I told you, it was all digital, practically nothing on paper. It’s all on the computers at QPS.”
“So the value of the NPP is that it can be reverse engineered?”
“Yeah. And it is the only
physical prototype that was made.”
I smiled, then gave a small laugh.
She said, “I’m telling you the truth, Lacklan.”
“I think you probably are, or some near version of it. So if all this is true, how does it tie in with New Jersey, your mother, the Colonel…”
She puffed out her cheeks, then nodded. “It’s basically true, Lacklan. I may have elaborated here and there, but the story is basically true.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“It is too much of a coincidence, Emily. The one company in the U.S.A. conducting that kind of research and development is located just where your long-lost dad happens to be living? Come on!”
“It’s not a coincidence, Lacklan. It was deliberate. I was working for QPS in Jersey. They have a small research facility there. I am damn good at what I do. When I found out about my father, I asked for a transfer. The plant here wasn’t that close, anyway. It’s at least halfway to Houston, probably a bit more. I had a few interviews and they thought I’d be a good fit, so they agreed to the transfer. That was a couple of years ago, and I was promoted twice during that time. Like I said, I am good.”
It made sense. I wasn’t taking what she said on faith, but it actually made more sense than she realized. I still had my doubts about the details, but I figured the substance was about right. I already knew the answer to the question I asked next, but I was curious to see what she would say.
“Why didn’t you print the research and smuggle that out, too?”
She laughed. “Apart from the fact that it would have taken a couple of small trucks to move it all, even if we’d tried to print only the most essential findings, we couldn’t have. They had shut down the whole system. The computers were all dead.”
“You got anything on your own computer, or Jerry’s?”
“No, that was strictly forbidden. Why are you so interested in the research? All the essential stuff can be gleaned from reverse engineering.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess it can. Pandora’s box is open. Everything inside it has been unleashed. Now all we have to do is study it and replicate it.”
