Virtual Immortality

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Command thinks that Warner has hired them for something.”

  He grimaced as the distraction of their conversation almost caused him to miss a red light. Nina lifted a foot to keep her in the seat during the hard deceleration.

  “I’m aware of that theory, it’s the whole reason we’re watching Warner. Let’s go over what we do know.”

  “Karl Warner, age 47, diplomatic envoy from the ACC, specifically, Germany. He has been in-country for three months as an ambassador. He has a small personal guard team and favors fine food, expensive clothing, women, cars… looks like every other millionaire playboy in the ACC. If I remember the file correctly, he was not content harassing common women and the wrong man’s daughter wound up on the business end of his attitude. All signs point to him being sent here as a dumping ground post. They’re probably hoping one of us puts a bullet in him.”

  Dale looked at her for a moment before returning his eyes to the road. “He’s conspicuous in his normality. Too normal?”

  “Maybe,” Nina mused. “Is it possible to be too normal? There is always a crack somewhere. He will eventually screw up. Have the net team check his background again and look for any traces of modification in the files. Verify all the log dates so we know that they didn’t invent him four months ago.”

  “Check. Next we have Itai Korin, 36, former agent for the Mossad, our sources say he parted ways with them 4 years ago. His operational qualifications consist primarily of demolitions work, counterterrorism, and sniper training. They redacted his file to the point of being almost blank. We cannot tell the official nature of his separation with the Israeli military. There’s no categorization here… dishonorable, honorable, AWOL… not a damn thing.”

  “That’s suspicious. Usually there would be some kind of falsified record if he was going into a cover operation or assigned to a covert unit. The lack of it creates questions they would not want asked.”

  Dale slammed on the brakes, again, to avoid hitting a malfunctioning delivery bot sputtering too low to the road. “He freelances with no allegiance to any sovereign nation or ideology, just to credits. We connected him to four assassinations, each in different corners of the ACC. Two kidnappings, again both in the ACC, and one attempted bombing at one of our military bases on Mars.”

  “Mr. Korin is quite the globetrotter, and it’s not uncommon for their intelligence community to wipe out mistakes. Chances are, Mossad would have tried to burn him once it got out he went rogue. Hardin’s friends in C-Branch said they couldn’t find any records of that either, but the Israelis have never been very open with our intelligence community. Even if they know where he is, they wouldn’t tell us. Have we gotten anything from our contacts at the UN?”

  “Hardin doesn’t want to risk mentioning him right now; if there is a connection to a sanctioned operation, we don’t want to tip them off that we’re on to him.”

  “They think he’s still active Mossad?” Nina’s face failed to hide her frustration. “What the hell for? Trying to cozy up to Warner for some reason while posing as a merc?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It doesn’t add up, four years of mercenary activity that is clearly not on the same page as the rest of his country doesn’t strike me as a deep cover operation.”

  “It’s as much of a mystery as how Israel has managed to stay independent this long.” Dale laughed. “Falsified?”

  Her hands balled into fists. “Please don’t tell me this wasn’t checked, and checked again.”

  “No… We did, five times, and verified it through some of our contacts in Moscow. I’m just saying it could be a very good fake.”

  Dale raised a scary implication that made her question her readiness for this operation. “That would require a lot of resources, time, and effort… but for what? Warner is a mole on the ass of their system. He’s a flea.” She punched the armored wall behind her.

  The whump startled nearby pedestrians.

  Swiping through the electronic document, she stopped to stare at a still from the starport surveillance system where it captured Itai. Close cropped hair, so short it was more like a dark stain on his skull. His thick brown eyebrows angled in a suspicious backwards glance over his shoulder. His attire was plain and unassuming, like a working class guy just going about his uneventful life.

  “He’s been in the UCF for eight months and we have one still image? How is that possible? If he is really as good as the lack of our information implies, we’re in for a hell of a ride.”

  “It gets better.” Dale stretched. “General Anatoly Nemsky, age 42, dishonorably discharged three years ago for excessive brutality.”

  “I didn’t think the ACC gave a rat’s ass about the Geneva Accords; excessive brutality?” Nina looked up from the file with a doubtful glance at him.

  “I guess even they have their limits, though I don’t even want to think about what they are.” He whistled, easing the van through a left turn. “He is doing the mercenary thing now too, but he made his name as the Butcher of Saint Petersburg, The Butcher of Rostov-na-Donu, The Reaper of Odessa… It goes on, name a town in Europe and you can put ‘The butcher of’ in front of it and it’s in here. He claimed responsibility for the Revolution Day bombing of a supposed resistance cell in Petrozavodsk that killed thirty-eight members of the resistance and almost three hundred civilians. This guy loves turning automatic weapons on streets full of unarmed people.”

  “This isn’t making any sense.” Nina looked out the window, staring at the reflection of their van in passing buildings. “Nemsky is a general with a small personal army at his disposal. His exploits have all involved large-scale assaults or squad level maneuvers, largely against civilian populations. His history shows that he retained loyalty to the ACC after his dismissal…”

  “Probably staged,” interrupted Dale.

  “…and works for them as a private contractor. There’s nothing in his background that suggests even the smallest bit of training in spycraft or intelligence.”

  Dale leaned into a right turn. “Itai could be handling that. Maybe Nemsky is just extra muscle?”

  “The best way to get his mercenary army in here would be through the Badlands up from Mexico. I checked the border logs and found nothing unusual. The alternative is one or two men at a time posing as civilians, entering the city spread out over many months. The net rats have been comparing flight records and photos for days now and have come up empty handed.”

  “That would suggest he’s here alone then.” Dale frowned. “That doesn’t fit his background.”

  “Exactly. Karl Warner is the only common link. We know they are here, we just don’t know why. A German diplomat, an ex-pat Israeli intelligence agent, and an insane Russian despot with dreams of grandeur don’t seem like the kind of guys who would go out for drinks on a Thursday night.”

  “No, but it makes one hell of an opener to a joke.” Dale laughed.

  Still grinning five minutes later, he pulled into a spot in front of a large building sculpted out of maroon stone. Tall metal letters over the archway spelled out “Imperial” in steel that reflected the pale dusty reds of the building to which it was mounted. One-hundred and fourteen stories of opulence, the Imperial Hotel was one of the more prestigious places to stay in the city.

  A holographic sign in the window announced a several day seminar on basket weaving complete with dates and times. Nina covered her face with her hand.

  “On the damn sign right out front?” She hopped out, slamming the door so hard the van rocked, and took a step towards the building. “Get this thing set up and ready, I’ll be right back… I need to go rip someone’s head off.”

  “That was a euphemism, I hope.”

  Nina stormed across the expanse of sidewalk in front of the hotel and made her way into the conference center. Many shades of burgundy and maroon with gold touches here and there decorated the lobby, and a polished grey marble reception desk stood in front of two smiling women and a man, all in white uniforms. Red barrier
cords sectioned off space into common feeder lines in front of several separate rooms. Her anger increased more when she saw the only line in the room that had anyone waiting in it was the basket weaving line.

  One frumpy older woman stood amid an ocean of shopping bags containing craft supplies. A blond man in a tuxedo blocked her at the door to the hall, assuring her that they would begin seating at the appointed time, and he could not let anyone in early.

  Nina waved at agent Perrin as she ducked past him and jogged down the aisle past dark blue seats that faced a small stage. Every ten yards, three steps down accommodated the descending grade.

  “Young man, why did that woman just go inside? I thought you said it wasn’t time to go in?”

  “I’m sorry Ma’am, she’s an employee.”

  Nina leapt onto the stage and through the curtain into the staff room where a number of terminals had been set up and a dozen Division 9 personnel worked. Some brought up surveillance links to cameras facing the diplomatic building across the street while others handled communications between the various operations agents in the field. They had janitors in the Diplomatic Tower, a man on the security team, three other vans nearby, and a pair of phony HVAC technicians on the roof.

  Samantha Cole, the senior member of the technical staff, conducted events from the center of the room. A fast riser among the ranks, only a year older than Nina, she had degrees in electronics and communications. An attractive black woman, she always dressed two pay grades higher. The scent of her berry-inspired perfume permeated the entire area. Samantha hovered over a tech agent who appeared to be having difficulty receiving a clean signal from a holo-cam module aimed at Warner’s window.

  “Looks like some kind of interference, there’s probably a refractive overlay on the glass causing the laser to break up.” Samantha folded her arms. “Does anyone have any intel about possible passive detection Warner has in there, how close can we get with listening devices without triggering the alarms?”

  One man in at the end of the row of desks spoke up but did not turn. “On it.”

  Nina looked at the display, at the pattern of static on the monitor that warped into a nimbus of color pulsing through the image. Sub-windows floated in her eyes, cycling through sample patterns from various diffusion overlays, clear adhesive film with millions of tiny mirror like flecks intended to break up laser listening devices. The static looked different; the variance became noticeable only by superimposing the images. Interference patterns from active ACC jamming electronics was even further off. She ran through a number of other possible causes before she saw one that came close.

  “It does look a lot like an overlay, but it isn’t. Someone or something is interfering with the signal directly from cyberspace. The static pattern is characteristic of a data sequencing routine trying to emulate a diffusion overlay.”

  Samantha turned with a glare as if ready to yell at one of her underlings for questioning her diagnosis. Seeing Nina, all the vitriol drained from her voice. “Of course, Ma’am.” She turned to another man at a desk a few feet away. “Double check the network interlinks, make sure that we haven’t been compromised. I want that signal cleaned up.”

  He nodded and took on a vacant stare as his mind dove into cyberspace. Samantha faced Nina and paused in her train of thought as she noticed the obvious look of displeasure.

  “Someone tried to make us think there was a diffuser on that window. Very subtle, I only spotted it because I superimposed the patterns.” A brief smile to Cole broke through her mood. “Who exactly is responsible for the sign in the lobby?” Just a hint of shout rode her voice.

  “Sign in the lobby?” Samantha glanced around the room.

  Nina pointed in the general direction. “There’s a damned advert in the front window of the hotel about the seminar. What part of low key did people miss?”

  “I… That shouldn’t have been up there, we told the hotel not to do it.”

  “There’s a woman waiting in line. We’ll need to get someone in here to do a damn speech about basket weaving now. What is the contingency plan if people actually show up for it?” Nina folded her arms as she calmed the tone of her voice.

  “We have a speaker ready; we anticipated that.” A man’s voice echoed from the far end of the room by the entrance.

  Nina relaxed. “Good. Someone please kill that sign, and make sure the guy uses the right name.”

  Samantha ran over the specifics of the setup for the operation. One could see how she had made a name for herself in such a short amount of time. She had a reputation for being thorough and professional. The only doubt Nina had was wondering how Samantha would react if something went off plan. According to her file, that was an eventuality she had not yet encountered.

  Aside from a few blips: the sign, the speaker’s name, and a sleepless night, Nina felt a little more confident that the day would wind up being okay. Having Samantha at the nerve center lent an air of competence to everything.

  Now it became a waiting game until Korin, Nemsky, or some intermediary made contact with Warner―and when they did, they would get the evidence they needed to act.

  enny James Marlon was no stranger to the Badlands. An artifact hunter by trade, he was one of the damaged individuals that risked leaving the safety of civilization in search of junk that fools with more money than sense would pay for. The trade yielded a surprising profit for things considered by practical people to be scrap, but regarded by the wealthy or eccentric as historical treasures. Unlike most of his forays into the untamed areas, this time a dart thrown at a map did not choose his destination. His friend Joey stumbled across some credible information and passed it along.

  He gazed out at the passing beige blur, interrupted every so often by a streak of green. The huge truck could seat six in the cabin and its cargo bed held supplies as well as room for whatever he found. Thickened body panels offered the reassurance of armor, and it rode high up on solid tires with deep grooved treads capable of paddling through thick mud. The reinforced doors muted sound and let the cabin fill with the low whine of the electric motors. Two shotguns and a combat rifle rattled in the rack behind him each time the wheels ate a piece of scrub brush or a small rock.

  The glare of the fading sunlight set the rim of his cowboy style hat aglow and cast a strong shadow over his green eyes. A few days’ worth of stubble spread across his face below a thin nose; dark chestnut hair hung to his shoulders. A brown duster coat added to the western affect, along with a pistol on each hip and the obligatory synthetic snakeskin boots.

  The truck wound its way down a rough passage through the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains into the area once called Colorado. He had some reservations about this trip, considering the final destination―the southwest corner of former Kansas, near the territory of the Steel Reavers.

  Eldon Church tried without much success to get some sleep in the passenger seat. A former Recon Marine, he declined to re-up after serving nine years. He may have been out of the Marines, but the Marines were not out of him. A thin layer of sweat coated his chocolate skin, beading upon his shaved head. Neatly trimmed facial hair circled his mouth as if it had been drawn on with a marker.

  Eldon opened his eyes and glanced at the window to his right, then at Kenny, then to the temperature display showing 89 degrees. He grasped his fatigue shirt and flapped it, glaring at the readout. With a flick of his finger over the console, the window whined into the door. A blast of cold air carried the scent of pine and burnt flesh. Seeing Kenny without a drop of sweat on him only seemed to anger him more.

  “Dammit man… I’m sweatin’ my balls off in here.”

  Kenny thumbed the steering wheel. “Spend enough time out here you get used to the heat.”

  “Maybe that’s why Alyssa is bein’ such a pain in your ass. You should try turning on the A/C.”

  Kenny frowned as his knuckles creaked.

  Eldon sighed, softening his tone. “How you holdin’ up?”

  He wru
ng the wheel, scowling at the rearview mirror. His hesitant sigh became words, as he knew Eldon would not let it go. “She’s just acting out since the divorce, normal crap for a fourteen year-old.”

  “My sister’s boy was quite a handful when they broke up, course he was only nine back then.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be okay.” Kenny tried to distract himself from the thought by fussing with the navigation panel again. “Alyssa ain’t too happy about me taking this trip, short notice and all.”

  “It’s Katherine, isn’t it?” Eldon wiped his forehead with his white tank top. “You ain’t over her.”

  “You know it wasn’t my idea.” Kenny met Eldon’s gaze for the first time. “Is it that obvious?”

  “The last time we came out here, you was like a kid goin’ to the toy store.” Eldon waved his arms around in an exaggeration of the way he remembered Kenny. “Now you’re all quiet and brooding and shit.”

  Kenny faced front, staring into the onrush of terrain.

  “Yeah.” He flinched as though pulling the details of his personal life out caused physical pain. “It’s just how sudden it was. One day she’s her normal self, and the next she’s a psychotic bitch. I still love the woman she used to be.”

  “That E-14 is some nasty venomous shit.” Eldon shook his head. “What I don’t get is how she got hooked on it. The MI guys would use that crap and they didn’t get addicted; shit, they couldn’t stand it.”

  “Yeah but military intelligence might have been given something to counteract it.” Kenny’s face fell at the thought. “I went back and forth with the doctor, he couldn’t explain it either. He said it had to be some kind of genetic predisposal or something.”

  “Predisposition?” Eldon asked with a hint of a smile.

  Kenny nodded. “Yeah, that. We tried a bunch of things to get her off it but it just made her more erratic and wacky. The cops would have taken Alyssa out of the house if Katherine didn’t leave. How the fuck can they make you choose between your wife and daughter?”