The Project

by I C Cosmos

  >> You have to come in. This is getting too dangerous.

  >> Probably. But I come in only if I can continue working on this project.

  >> Understand. We need your knowledge to take them down.

  >> Thank you. I think I should stay in the field a few more days to let them believe they have the upper hand. And we must not scare them in any way before they reveal what TP3 is all about.

  >> Makes sense.

  It did make sense, but Collin didn’t like it. He wouldn’t be able to sleep unless he was a hundred and ten percent certain she was safe.

  >> Anything else you want to know?

  >> Yes. How did you set up this communication channel?

  >> I’ll put the program into the data repository for you.

  >> Thanks. Could you quickly walk us through it?

  Collin didn’t want to lose the connection with her. As long as they chatted, she was safe, he felt, knowing how foolish that was.

  >> Yes. Let’s do it live. But I’d like to establish our communication protocol first.

  >> Of course.

  Collin’s phone pinged. He looked at the message and winced.

  Santini is on his way to Sassari.

  Alghero, Sardinia

  The next day

  Helen strolled along the sea promenade in Alghero, assessing the clouds. The whole morning was uncharacteristically overcast, the chance of rain increasing by the minute. She reached the restaurant Nic and she had used as their base last year and sat down under a large umbrella.

  It was too early for lunch, and the restaurant was almost empty. Helen ordered a cappuccino and mineral water. Several yachts bobbed in the dark waves, but Helen’s devices didn’t show any activity. She had spotted two of Santini’s goons when she walked to the promenade. If they had the super-phones on them, they weren’t using them.

  The lack of action unnerved Helen. Collin was right. She should come in. But would he really let her work with his team? She bit her lip.

  What was the best way to bring DEI to justice and continue with the Project as it was meant to be? Bobby wanted to sponsor a new counterterrorism program when this was over, which was great. But Helen was realistic. Although Bobby and she could make a dent, they couldn’t handle DEI on their own.

  Collin, on the other hand, had the power of the government behind him. He had what it took to handle the crooks who corrupted Helen’s programs. But on which side of the law would he put her? She had accessed his computer without authorization, after all. Was the evidence she had collected in her “data fortress” sufficient to explain it and clear her name? Or would he charge her with all kinds of federal crimes? Helen didn’t think so, but still…

  And could Collin really take on the president’s men? Or what if he was one of them? Her heart cringed. She didn’t want to go there but had to take it into account.

  A picture of Nic jumped into her mind. Sitting across the table from her, frowning, rubbing his left elbow absentmindedly. She wished she could talk with Nic about this. But Nic quit the Project without warning. Even if she connected with him somehow, could she trust him?

  Could she trust any of them? Bobby, Collin, Nic?

  A figure walking from the harbor caught Helen’s eye. Black pants, black shirt, aviators, large black boots. Santini.

  Helen took a deep breath, her eyes not leaving her network analyzer as Santini strutted past the restaurant. Nothing. Not a bleep. Hm… Helen checked the time. According to her orders, she had to stay in Alghero at least another hour.

  A message box lit up on the screen. Bobby.

  >> My ex is flying in. Could we set up a chat to discuss legal options tomorrow? Then there is the issue of the hostile websites attacking TP. Springing up like mushrooms. Ideas? And btw, I found another file that looks like the one you were interested in before. Copy attached.

  Helen forgot all about Bobby’s ex, Lynne, a renowned lawyer. Sharp and shrewd. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her in the courtroom. Or any room. Could Lynne be trusted? Or was she another source of trouble?

  At least Bobby sent the new file. Helen sat back and looked around. Santini was walking back toward the restaurant.

  Not knowing what to expect, Helen closed Bobby’s message, noticing that her fingers trembled. A jolt of anger shot through her. They are playing me! She bit her lip.

  If they are trying to terrorize me, they are missing the mark. Helen straightened up and pushed her shoulders back. She was scared, she admitted it to herself. But not scared off. She was prepared to fight for what the Project stood for before they corrupted it. She coldly watched Santini pass the restaurant, her resolve to take the crooks down getting stronger with every one of his heavy-booted steps.

  She waited a couple of minutes after Santini disappeared around the corner, and got back to Bobby’s message. The copy of the new secured file was ready to be cracked. Helen carefully repeated the strategy she devised to get into the first file, hoping it would work with this one as well. She let out a sigh of relief when her screen filled up with a long list of audio files labeled by dates.

  Not wanting to listen to the files in the restaurant, Helen signaled the waiter and paid. She walked slowly to her car, half expecting to run into Santini or his goons. The air felt heavy, the clouds getting darker by the second. The wind stirred up debris in the narrow streets. Helen quickened her pace.

  A few heavy drops fell on her face as she neared the car. She quickly scanned her bomb app and jumped in as lightning lit up the sky, followed by distant thunder. Heavy rain pummeled the windshield. Helen felt like she was going through a car wash and decided to wait until the worst of the storm passed by before driving on.

  She put in her earbuds and clicked on the first audio file in Bobby’s new delivery.

  “I didn’t invest in Total Protection to see sales slide.”

  “They are not sliding.”

  “But don’t go up fast enough.”

  “Bullock said that Europe and Asia don’t follow the US model.”

  “I don’t care what he says. We pay him to exceed expectations.”

  Helen closed her eyes and concentrated on the voices, not recognizing anyone she knew. Bobby hit the jackpot this time. He’d secured recordings of the dividers and rulers.

  “The artificial intelligence, of course. We got it, let’s use it,” a mellow voice proposed.

  Merciless pounding assaulted Helen’s temples.

  “We are testing it out already in a small group. It works like a charm. Talk about lifelong friends at each other’s throats in no time,” a female said.

  “In that case we should roll it out on a large scale.”

  “Do we still need Helen for it?”

  “No.”

  “But we need her as insurance in case Nic sabotages us.”

  Helen froze.

  “We are wasting our time with both of them.” An angry male voice.

  “Let’s give it a few more days. Move the show to Sardinia and trap them there.” The mellow voice again.

  “And if he doesn’t show up?”

  “We discussed this before. We capture her and put out a contract on him. And proceed with Operation Total Power according to our plan.” Uncle Andreas. Helen gasped.

  The recording stopped. Helen sat in the car in silence, eyes closed. Merciful calmness took over her.

  When she looked up, the clouds broke, and sun rays beamed down through softly falling rain. There must be a rainbow somewhere, Helen thought.

  She put on her sunglasses and started the car, her mind made up.

  Monte Carlo, Monaco

  A day later

  Injustice. Injustice grabbed him by the throat and punched him in the gut. Open your eyes, get up, get going! Frank pushed himself to fight back. But he didn’t have the energy to follow his own orders. Injustice had the upper hand.

  For years, Frank kept the tentacles of injustice at bay. He served the country. He raised Nic. He put up a good fight, but dee
p down he sensed he lost the war on injustice the day Angie was taken away from him the second time.

  Losing her the first time had been heartbreaking, but Frank had weathered it. It had happened at their engagement party. Frank’s younger brother was in town taking a break from touring with his music band and swung by. His joviality and playfulness stole the show. And Angie’s heart.

  Knowing his brother inside out, Frank pleaded with Angie, alluding to his brother’s superficial charm, the irresponsibility of his happy-go-lucky attitude, the many broken hearts he had left behind. To no avail. Smitten, Angie broke their engagement. Frank was crushed.

  But he was young then. He believed in justice, in doing the right thing and doing it right. And he trusted that if Angie and he were to be together, she’d come back to him. He threw himself into his work at the Department of Justice, and before long his prayers were answered.

  Angie came back to him. Although not as Frank had imagined it. Angie hadn’t come back to him, Frank had run into her in their favorite bookshop. His heart contracted painfully when he spotted her leafing through books on pregnancy, tears glistening in her eyes. Frank guessed what had happened before Angie said a word.

  “Did he leave you?” he asked softly.

  Angie nodded, biting back tears.

  “And you are pregnant.”

  A silent nod. To Frank, marrying Angie and raising Nic as his own was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. Life’s reward was as sweet as it was seductive. Basking in Angie’s sunshine, Frank forgot about injustice.

  Little Nic and Frank lived happily in the world Angie created for them. A world filled with music, colors, laughter, sparkling joy. Her warm, comforting light fueled their universe, and they never expected it could be taken away from them. When it shattered, their life shattered with it.

  As injustice would have it, Angie was taken away on a gorgeous spring day. Unsuspecting, Frank walked to his office from a meeting in another building, reveling in the blue sky, the cherry blossoms, the singing birds.

  He knew something was wrong as soon as he spotted the officer waiting for him at the secretary’s desk. At first he thought it was a mistake. Angie in a car accident? With someone else? She hadn’t planned on going anywhere that day…

  Things took a turn for the worse when he came home. By that time he conceded that she had been killed in a car accident. But Frank wasn’t prepared for the letter she had left for him on the pillow. Telling him that she didn’t love him and was leaving him for his brother.

  Angie hadn’t taken Nic with her, but she had taken him from Frank nonetheless.

  Frank would never forget running after teary Nic to his room, watching him open the Italian treasure box and retrieve a piece of folded paper. A waft of Angie’s perfume nearly knocked Frank out as Nic unfolded the letter and read it, deadly silent. And then Nic’s all-knowing eyes looked up at Frank.

  “Mommy says my daddy isn’t my real daddy. What does it mean?”

  It meant that Nic never saw Frank as his real dad again. The wonderful connection they had for the first eight years of Nic’s life was broken.

  Never one to give up easily, Frank went on doing the right thing. But inside he was a broken man. Not quite aware of it, he continuously dreaded the day when injustice would claim its victory and his defeat would come to full light.

  The Project brought Nic and Frank together again. Driven by their shared desire to fight terrorism, they used to spend hours perfecting Nic’s system. Frank started to hope that they could rebuild their connection. The discord Andreas sowed when he took over the Consortium put an end to it.

  Frank cringed. Nic had disappeared, and Andreas was after Bobby now. Collin Frey’s people had provided indisputable evidence that Santini sabotaged Bobby’s Formula 1 car. Frank was convinced Andreas ordered it to unsettle Bobby and push him back to his old habits.

  Injustice tightened its grip on Frank’s throat. Andreas was involved in enough criminal activities to be sent away for years. But even if Frank managed to build a solid case against him, Andreas would take Frank down with him. Or, having a hotline to the president, Andreas would escape the consequences of his own wrongdoing and blame everything on Frank.

  I’d go down faster than the Titanic.

  A muted sob wheezed from Frank’s lips. Something snapped in him.

  He no longer cared whether the Project would be finished or not. His task was to oversee the collaboration of the Consortium and DEI, but no one ever said Frank had to do it himself. He’d delegate the Project to a bureaucrat who’d make the paperwork look right and keep Frank out of trouble.

  Frank chastised himself for not figuring this out earlier.

  Doing the right thing didn’t pay.

  Injustice reigned.

  Mount Ortobene, Nuoro

  11:55 p.m. Helen took a deep breath and went through the contents of her backpack the second time. All her devices were in, as well as her collection of travel documents stowed in a waterproof pouch. And the dark wig she needed to get out of Italy. Anything else was replaceable. She added a small bag with basic cosmetics. A luxury.

  She looked around the room. She never unpacked her trolley when traveling, ready to leave at a second’s notice. They knew that, having surveilled her in many hotels, so she wasn’t going to change her habits now. But she threw the dress she wore today over a chair and put her toiletries in the bathroom, leaving her toothbrush teetering on the small sink.

  She connected to the camera that was on her floor and temporarily overrode the livestream with a recording of the last uneventful five minutes. She carefully opened the door, slipped out, and made her way to the stairs, not disturbing the silence of the hotel. Holding her breath, she made it to the service entrance. Once outside, she put on a black balaclava that completed her all-black outfit and disappeared in the darkness.

  Her heart pounding, she found the hiking trail and got on it. She had thirty minutes to get to the rendezvous point. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she moved quickly and quietly like a cat. Her ears attuned to the smallest sounds, and although she didn’t hear anything alarming, she felt as if she wasn’t alone. She kept moving nonetheless, scared out of her mind. One step at a time, one step at a time…

  About twenty minutes into her journey, she heard voices coming toward her. She left the trail and hid behind a large boulder, barely breathing, hoping that no one could hear her heart thumping against her chest.

  “How far do we have to go?”

  “Another mile or so.”

  “They could have dropped us off closer to the hotel.”

  “Yeah. But Paul doesn’t want any evidence.”

  Santini’s thugs. Helen rolled her lips in, willing herself not to make a sound.

  “All this trouble for a stupid broad.”

  “Yeah. But you don’t want to cross Paul on this one.”

  “I don’t get why we have to keep her alive.”

  “No one said we can’t rough her up.”

  The laughter that followed froze the blood in Helen’s veins. Escaped just in time! Santini must have set this up without using digital communication. They were getting more careful. Helen winced. She waited until the men fully disappeared before getting back on the trail. She almost ran down the hill, hoping to make up the lost time. She desperately wanted to check her watch but didn’t dare to peek at it because its lit-up screen would turn her into an instant target.

  The trail turned, and Helen saw the road in the distance. A branch creaked behind her, sending her heart racing. She was so close…the rendezvous point was in sight now. Not turning around, Helen sped up, focused on the trail, carefully avoiding loose stones and branches. She reached the point where the trail crossed the road, turned right, followed the road to a hairpin turn, and crouched down behind a low shrub.

  A dark SUV came down the road and slowed almost to a stop as it was making its way around the turn. The side door slid open, and Helen sprinted to it. Light flashed t
o her left as strong hands pulled her in.

  Then everything went dark.

  Mount Ortobene

  Nic ran across the road and disappeared in the forest. No one followed him. Another SUV rolled down the hill and picked up the two guys who followed Helen from the hotel. Nic sighed. Helen surprised him.

  He had planned to get into the hotel and convince her to leave with him. She wasn’t safe. The Consortium was after both of them…and up to no good.

  He had been so close to contacting Helen several times since she landed in Nice… He had been so close to her in the Hanbury Gardens and in old Ventimiglia; he could have just said a word, and she would have stopped and listened to him. But would she have left with him?

  He had other chances on the ferry to Sardinia. And then in Alghero when he shuffled past “their” restaurant after Santini had walked by. She was engrossed in one of her devices and gave him merely a perfunctory glance. Amazing how people underestimate old men. Even Helen… He considered sitting down at the table next to her and telling her about the Consortium’s latest plans, but would she have listened to him?

  He had been waiting for the best moment. That moment was in Nuoro. But he had missed it by a minute or two. He was just about to enter the hotel when she appeared at the service entrance, obviously having her own agenda. I should have grabbed her right there and then. Nic regretted not acting quicker. But he couldn’t have known she’d get company on the trail. He had almost run into the two guys as they emerged from the forest and followed her.

  Curiously, they kept their distance and didn’t make contact with her. They drew their weapons when Santini’s clowns appeared but stayed out of sight, not interested in anyone but Helen. Professionals. Cold and calculating. Wearing state-of-the-art night vision camera headsets. Nic had done his best to avoid them, but they had probably recorded him anyhow.