by Jack Soren
8:17 P.M. Local Time
BARELY TEN MINUTES from the Strip, where tourists were staggering, players were strategizing, and young men and women were doing things that would stay in Vegas, Per and Hank sat in their rental car watching a nondescript building surrounded by a nine-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The fence had been there before, but the razor wire was new, a security measure implemented after the bombings started.
Despite the crowds on the Strip, this street was quiet and seemed practically deserted. The building they watched wasn’t the only unmarked structure in what looked like a typical industrial section of town, but while the contents of the others contained massage parlors, VIP clubs, and sex shows, this building contained nothing but the cold dead.
It was the last intact cryonic repository Harcourt owned in America. What Per wanted to know was why. Why was this building spared? Was there some significance in that, or was there some other reason it hadn’t been attacked like the others, perhaps a timetable Per had yet to discover? Had the bomber been on her way here but something had happened to her? Was the pattern interrupted because of something as pedestrian as a traffic accident? Per’s exterior might have been silent and calm, but inside he was a roiling ocean in a storm.
“Y’all ever been to Vegas before?” Hank asked from the driver’s seat.
“No,” Per said flatly, his eyes never wavering from their target. It was the fifth time Hank had tried to engage Per in some sort of conversation in the three hours they had been sitting there, and every time, Per had responded with a single, monosyllabic answer. He was regretting not leaving Hank at the motel or leaving him for good and continuing on his own.
“Hell, I remember the first time I was here,” Hank said, launching into another of his one-sided conversations. While most of Per’s attention was on the building, part of him was fascinated by Hank’s inability to endure quiet. But he knew that was a common personality trait in Americans. Silence let them think, and if nothing else, America was a nation of distraction. In another time, it was something that Per would have enjoyed investigating and dissecting. But not now. He slowly put his gloved hand on Hank’s forearm and squeezed with a just few percent of his artificial arm’s capacity.
“I’m going to need you to sit quietly for a little while, Mr. Green. Can you do that for me?” Per asked without taking his eyes off the building.
“Y . . . yes. Yes, sir,” Hank managed. Per released him and put his hand back in his lap, barely noticing Hank panting and rubbing his forearm.
“Good.”
When another hour had passed—in silence—Per had gathered everything he was going to from his proximity to this puzzling structure. He wasn’t going to find any answers here, but he had known that before they had come. He was here to build his question database, to enrich the space where the answers would go.
“Tell me what you know about Dr. Reese,” Per said abruptly in the car’s quiet, finding no amusement in Hank’s flinch. He knew the scientist had disappeared four months ago and what was in his file, but Per wanted more.
“Uh, Reese? I only met him a few times. He worked out of our research facility in Canada, just outside Toronto. Nice enough guy, I guess. Crazy smart. I mean, genius smart. Couldn’t make heads nor tails out of what he was saying when he talked about his work. He’d been with us almost five years before he . . . disappeared.”
“Yes, that’s all in the file, Mr. Green. Tell me what’s not.”
“Not? Okay, let’s see. He liked fancy cars. He didn’t have one, he just liked them. He’d go on and on about the new BMW or Aston Martin. His desk was always covered in car magazines too.”
“I see,” Per said. “Go on.”
“He was married for a while. Didn’t work out, though. Got divorced a couple of years back. Apparently she took him to the cleaners too.”
“Anything else?”
“Listen,” Hank said, turning in his seat to face Per. Per obliged the silent request and took his eyes off the building for the first time to look at Hank. “I know what Jim—Mr. Harcourt—said, but I don’t think this Reese thing is anything. We investigated a little when he disappeared, but there didn’t appear to be no foul play or nothing. I’d just move on to something else if it were me.”
“Thank you for your counsel,” Per said, turning back to the building.
Hank started to say something else but then apparently thought better of it and just turned around in his own seat.
“Take me to the airport, Mr. Green,” Per said abruptly.
“We ain’t going in?”
Per answered him by leaning back and closing his eyes.
“Where we headed to now?” Hank asked after a few minutes of driving.
“Toronto.”
Jirojin Maru
1:52 P.M. Local Time
LESS THAN FIFTEEN minutes after Hank had booked a flight out of McCarran International Airport, Umi’s Internet sniffer—a computer code designed to search constantly for information all across the World Wide Web—sent a report to her office computer. Ten minutes after that, she called Tatsu and gave her the details.
“Toronto?” Tatsu said from the computer screen.
“Is there a problem?”
“No, Obasan, no, of course not. It’s just—never mind.”
She knew Tatsu was tired, and rightfully so. She’d been working hard these past few weeks. But if they didn’t take care of everything—every last thread, especially now—then it all would have been for naught. She was sure Tatsu knew that, but then again, she was young and wild and very far away.
“There’s a flight out in less than an hour. I should go,” Tatsu said.
“Excellent, little one. Call me when you land, and I’ll give you more instructions. And don’t worry; if all goes well, you’ll still be here in time,” Umi said. She was about to cut the connection, but then added: “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
Tatsu smiled and seemed to become reinvigorated by the false compliment. Though Umi wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was false. Her feelings for Tatsu were starting to complicate her clear vision. Not enough to endanger things but enough to be annoying. She hit the disconnect button and leaned back in her chair. She didn’t think she was showing it, but Tatsu wasn’t the only one tired from the past few weeks. And the illness ravaging Umi’s body, despite her medication, wasn’t helping things. Umi was keeping that hidden from everyone, as well. She’d even kept it from Mikawa as his illness had triumphed over him.
“She seems unsure,” the woman standing just out of sight of the webcam said. She spoke with a slight British accent. Her name was Maggie Reynolds, an ex-MI6 operative with a checkered past. Now she was Umi’s head of security and had only recently taken the position. Umi knew her loyalty only went as far as the money given to her, but in her experience, Umi found the simplest motivations were often the best. Umi’s money had lured the British spy away with very little effort. But after spending over twenty years in intelligence—ten of those in a Russian gulag—it really hadn’t taken much convincing.
“Let me worry about Tatsu, Ms. Reynolds, you worry about your end. Has everyone been vetted as I requested?” Umi asked. She had let Maggie know that Tatsu was abroad on an assignment associated with the coming event, but she hadn’t revealed any details, and she had no intention of sharing them now.
Umi still routed all security concerns through her head guard, Mr. Morgan, and had instructed him to keep Reynolds out of the loop. Umi had only wanted Reynolds for her recent MI6 credentials—credentials that would help convince certain guests that it was safe and viable to attend the conference. The “vetting” was another ruse, simply meant to put Reynolds’s face and credentials in front of the right people.
“About eighty percent, so far. The rest should be—”
“Ms. Reynolds, you assured me th
at you could handle this. I could have hired several younger agents for what I’m paying you.” The dig wasn’t necessary, but it made Umi feel better. She’d expected the disgruntled agent to be a lot easier to manipulate. But Umi supposed that was her mistake since her experience with other MI6 operatives on her payroll was not all that different.
“I am handling it. Perhaps we’d be done by now if the security staff you saddled me with didn’t spend most of their time elsewhere, and you didn’t keep changing the guest list,” Maggie said. Her tone was even and matter-of-fact, but Umi got the message. Her new security chief wasn’t like the rest of her staff. She didn’t cast her eyes down when Umi passed or stumble over herself in an attempt to please her.
“I’ll keep your limitations in mind, Ms. Reynolds,” Umi said. She took pleasure in the effect the words had. Reynolds didn’t say anything, but the smolder in her eyes was plain.
“I’d best get back to work if there’s nothing else,” Reynolds said after a long silence. “Oh, I almost forgot, Captain Tanaka wants to see you on the bridge. Something about the defense system.”
“Thank you, when I have time I’ll—”
“And I wanted to ask you about Crystasis,” Maggie said, stopping in the doorway as she tapped on her tablet computer.
Umi’s scalp tingled at the mention of Harcourt’s company. She can’t know.
“What about them?” Umi asked, her external demeanor unchanged. After a few more taps on her tablet, Maggie looked up.
“Most of the guest list is very specific—scientists, venture capitalists, et cetera, but Crystasis seems to have a blanket invitation to the conference. Everyone from lab assistants to administrative staff. Was that an error?” Umi searched Maggie’s features but could see nothing veiled there.
“Jim—Mr. Harcourt, Crystasis’s CEO—is an old friend. He’s made his resources available to me for some special projects over the past year. As a favor, I extended the invitation to all his employees, as a kind of company vacation. Now, if there isn’t anything else, perhaps you could worry less about my work and more about yours.”
It was all a lie made up on the spot. Umi had gone to great lengths to keep her name from being associated with the conference for just this reason. If Harcourt had even suspected for a moment that she was involved, he wouldn’t have allowed a single member of his staff anywhere near the Jirojin Maru.
Maggie looked like she wanted to reply, but Umi busied herself with paperwork on her desk. After a few moments, Maggie left. When the door closed, Umi dropped her pen and took a few deep breaths. The second Ms. Reynolds had fulfilled her purpose, she had to go.
In more ways than one.
MAGGIE COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time she’d met somebody who could push her buttons like Umi Tanabe. Of course, she was a thousand years old, so she’d had lots of practice, Maggie thought. The humor did little to lighten her mood. And it wasn’t the first time she’d felt like this. There was only one thing that was going to let her shake off the anxiety, so she could do her job. Well, two things really, but only one could be done on the Jirojin Maru, Tenabe’s leviathan of a ship.
She checked her watch and saw that she had just enough time before the next round of vetting interviews. She hurried back to her cabin and put on her running clothes, grabbed a bottle of water, and headed for the lower decks. They were the least frequented parts of the ship, she’d found, and perfect for some stress-reducing laps. Tenabe had the third largest yacht in the world, so a quick 2K run meant a mere eight laps. She put in her earbuds, surfed on her smartphone to her music, and started a shuffle of fast-beat jazz songs. The driving snare drums and smooth-legato piano practically moved her legs for her.
With each lap, the urge to grab Umi and shove her out a porthole lessened a little more. There weren’t enough laps in a day to completely remove the desire, but Maggie was used to keeping her emotion off her face. The trick had kept her alive in environments where others would have perished. Literally.
With that thought, images of her time in the Russian prison flooded back into her brain, as they usually did when she left a crack for them. She shook her head and ran faster, trying to drive the images and the memories away. It had almost worked when she rounded a corner and suddenly faced three men in strength-multiplying exoskeleton suits carrying a huge crate and blocking the corridor.
“Whoa!” Maggie yelled as she skidded to a stop, falling backward, her phone shooting out of her sleeve holster and clattering against the wall, the soothing music—and mood—abruptly gone. But the run had done the trick, and she laughed at the near miss. “Sorry, guys.”
The men just stared at her, still holding the crate, which must have weighed a ton if it took three men wearing those suits to lift it. She remembered the first time she’d seen the suits. A handsome young man named Nagura, who she saw now and then on the ship, had explained that the suits were basically wearable robots, increasing the wearer’s strength and stamina.
Maggie looked around and spotted her phone against the wall. She bent over to pick it up and while down there, looked back at the upside-down men—now with very different looks on their faces as they stared at her fit derriere and put the crate down.
Ah, shit.
She stood up and faced the trio as they made comments to each other in Japanese and laughed, the tone recognizable in any language. Maggie could tell they were working up their courage, taking small steps toward her.
“Take it easy, guys,” Maggie said even as she realized they probably had no idea what she was saying. She’d picked up a little Japanese in the past few months, but nowhere near enough to say Hey, don’t rape the pretty blond lady. And after exhausting herself with her run, she wasn’t sure she could take on these three brutes all at once—especially with those damn suits. At least, not without getting hurt herself.
She tried to move back the way she’d come, but one of them stepped in her path. Reflexively, she gave him a rabbit punch in the nose and pushed him away, old habits from her time in the Russian gulag kicking in. His bulk didn’t move, and she only managed to push herself closer to the two men behind her. The man touched his smacked nose and seemed to growl. He tried taking a swing at Maggie, but she easily brushed it aside and smacked him two more times in the nose, harder this time. A little blood trickled out one of his nostrils.
This is bad, she thought, turning and squaring off against all three. But before she could ready herself, the other two grabbed her by the arms. She struggled to get free, but it was impossible while they were wearing those suits. It was like trying to pry open a bear trap.
“Don’t!” Maggie said, slight panic working its way into her chest.
“Is there a problem, Ms. Reynolds?”
Maggie looked past the man in front of her and saw Umi’s small form standing in the hallway. She winced at the irony, noticing that even in English, the old woman’s words had an effect on the men. The two behind her immediately let go and moved back behind the crate.
Maggie was more concerned about the brute in front of her. With his bloody nose, he didn’t seem as easy to dissuade and appeared to be trying to decide what to do.
Umi barked something in Japanese and after a long stare at Maggie, the man finally moved past her to join his comrades.
“And I suggest you get back to work as well, Ms. Reynolds, if you’re finished with your playtime.”
“Yes, Mum,” Maggie said, bowing her shoulders and walking past Umi. The honorific had just slipped out, but her embarrassment wouldn’t let Maggie try to explain before she left.
It was much later—when she was showered, dressed, and back in front of her vetting computer—before her pride let her think clearly about the scene belowdecks. She kept wondering what had been in that huge crate. The area was technically off-limits, and equipment was stored in a completely different hold at the other end of th
e ship. But more importantly, what was Umi doing down there?
The next scientist’s face popped up on Maggie’s computer for his vetting interview, so she put the questions aside, but not before she decided to go back down there later. This time, though, she was leaving her earbuds in her room and bringing her gun.
Chapter Eight
London
Friday
8:00 A.M. Local Time
AFTER SPENDING TWO hours calming Lew down to the point where he didn’t want to grab a couple of grenades and run back to Emily’s flat, Jonathan had finally lain on Lew’s couch and stared at the ceiling for another two hours before he gave up on sleep altogether. He’d tried to call the headmaster at Natalie’s school, but no one answered. Lew had assured him that Natalie wasn’t in any danger when she called him, and had only been worried about Emily. Jonathan wanted to think that was the reason he hadn’t tried to call Natalie, thinking there was no need to wake her up, but he knew a bigger part of it was the fact that he hadn’t seen or spoken to her in so long. Regardless, he would have to call her in the morning to get to the bottom of this.
After making a few phone calls, he slipped out and left Lew snoring under the influence of his beers, anxiety, and a fistful of sleeping pills. When he got back, carrying a couple of large coffees, Lew was up and waiting for him. Most people would have been out cold for another half day.
“How’s the head?” Jonathan asked.
“I’ll tell you once the paramedics bring me back to life,” Lew said, rubbing his temples. Jonathan handed him a coffee before taking a long drink of his own. “Where have you been?”
“Getting this,” Jonathan said, pulling a few stapled pages out of his jacket pocket. “Preliminary forensic report.”
“From Emily’s?” Lew asked, the bleariness seeming to almost completely fade from his eyes.
“Yep.”
Jonathan had pulled some strings from his old life in the intelligence community to get an early copy of the forensic report from Emily’s loft. A lot of people owed him favors, especially in the UK, where his agency had run joint missions back in the day. His contacts had gotten him the report in under an hour. Which had surprised even him.
