“Not exactly. It was pre-recorded.”
“Who’s it from then?”
Cuijpers exhaled long and slow. “It’s a message from Ufuk Erdogmus.”
Another alarm sounded, this one alerting of a hull depressurization.
“Play it,” Siegel said.
Rankin held up his hands. “No. First things first.”
If it was pre-recorded, then it could wait, Rankin decided. “We need to fly our ship before anything else, then we communicate second.” These were the basic rules of piloting any ship, even if just flying a Cessna. “Get us stable, and get the Mars First systems online. It might be able to tell us more. Then we’ll listen to Ufuk Erdogmus’s message.”
There was more to it than that, though. Rankin had a bad feeling about what might be on that message. He needed to get things stable before they opened the Pandora’s box of whatever Ufuk had recorded. He had a bad feeling about it.
A very, very bad feeling.
Chapter 1
Italian Alps, high above Sanctuary Europe
The canister waited for Massarra as she reached the red-shuttered alpine hut: a small silvery object in the snow, a red light flashing and shedding its crimson glow over the gray ice. It was scarcely visible until she reached the final approach to the hut, itself hidden by the contours of the mountainside and now almost completely buried. On a long sign across a roof, blasted by unrelenting winds, read the words: “Refugio Sassal Mason.” Beyond the hut stood the mountain itself, and beneath that towering massif, the complex of Sanctuary Europe.
It had taken her three blistering cold days to get here. One day trudging across the snow pack by herself to find a way to get a boat on the water, bobbing in the pancake slush a few hundred feet from shore, and then two days sailing north. As promised, the tiny blinking lights had appeared in the sky. Ufuk’s drones. They guided her, fireflies against the churning black skies, and she’d followed them up the coast to somewhere near Genoa. She’d made it back to land, into a hangar, where a massive passenger drone had carried her up into the mountains under the cover of a storm.
It had been a rough trip.
At least the passenger drone was heated, and was stuffed full with artic survival gear.
It was almost pitch black, just a small patch of light from her headlamp, and the blinking light of the canister. She took off her gloves and stooped to retrieve the canister, then put the gloves back on and dug out the snow and ice from the front door, using a pack-shovel from the drone.
The hut’s interior was every bit as cold as the frigid air outside. At ground level it had to be twenty below, but up here, two thousand meters in altitude, she was afraid to guess. She got to work and lit a fire in the stone inglenook, and located the supplies the hut’s guardian had left for the next alpine season. She gobbled down food as she opened the canister.
Inside she found an access keycard with her image. It bore the Sanctuary Europe iconography, and a name that was not hers. It marked her as part of General Marshall’s mercenary military, a fact that would give her greater access than any other legend.
More detail came on the tablet—maps and schematics. Once inside, there were pre-arranged ways to make contact with Ufuk, or those he trusted were it too difficult for him to meet. Places where marks could be left when she arrived and dead-letter boxes in which communications could be left. Sometimes, the old ways were still the most effective. She went upstairs to a hiding place in one of the rooms. She changed into the coal-black uniform of the San EU military police, and then packed quickly, allowing herself a few hours to sleep.
Chapter 2
Prison Complex, Sanctuary Europe
It was Jess’s third time forcibly confined in almost as many weeks—first at Castello Ruspoli by Giovanni, and then on Isola de Gigli—and she wasn’t getting any more used it. At first she’d struggled, but sensing the uselessness, of being buried underground without any means of escape, she’d asked to speak with her lawyer. Then she demanded to see Ufuk Erdogmus. Once she calmed down, the black-clad men that escorted her to the detention center had been polite, even gentle. They even read her her rights.
She was afraid.
But not afraid for herself.
She was afraid for Hector, and for Giovanni, and for Lucca and Raffa. She’d dragged them all into this. The world would still be wrecked by Nomad, but she was sure that if she hadn’t appeared, somehow, by now, Giovanni would have found a way to survive and gotten Hector to the south. Now she’d buried them here with her in a snake pit, and she wasn’t sure this was a prison she’d be able to fight her way out of.
It wasn’t like any jail she’d ever seen—a thick, soft memory foam mattress for a bed, a sink and shower, and a small table and two chairs bolted to the floor. One wall was rough-hewn rock, but the other wasn’t metal bars, but a clear glass wall. Bright LED lights shone overhead. She felt more like she was an exhibit in a zoo than a prisoner. There was even a mini-bar stocked with bottles of water and vacuum-packed sandwiches, though it lacked a corkscrew or bottle opener or anything else sharp. She’d checked.
Michel Durand arrived about an hour later, to her intense relief.
“You could have at least told me that Müller was out,” Jess said before he even sat down at the table in her cell. “And on what grounds did they arrest me?”
“They didn’t give me any warning,” Durand admitted. “I told them you were a witness in an internal inquiry,” Durand said. “But they had this…”
He pulled a tablet from his briefcase, clicked it on. At first just an audio recording: “I should have killed him when I had the chance.” It was Jess’s voice.
“That was in my apartment,” Jess said, dumbfounded. “I was talking to Giovanni. I didn’t mean…I mean, are they allowed to do that?”
“I did say that they would hear everything. I did say, yes? There were security concerns, given the nature of the allegations.”
“Allegations?”
“That Müller has filed against you.” Durand pressed play on the tablet again. This time it was a video of Jess, leaving Durand’s office the day before, muttering, “I need to get a gun,” and then another video played, from a viewpoint high above Ufuk’s gardens, with Jess clearly saying, “If they let that bastard out, I’m going to kill him.”
The video finished playing.
“This is somewhat for your own safety,” Durand said after a pause to let Jess digest. “We’ll get you out in a few hours, probably confined to quarters. Mr. Erdogmus has filed to take responsibility. And there’s someone else here who would like to talk to you.”
Jess was about to ask who, when a tall man in a blue military suit appeared on the other side of the cell’s glass wall, flanked by two guards. “Miss Rollins,” the man announced as one of the guards unlatched the magnetic lock. “I am General Marshall.” He held out his hand.
She got up from sitting on the bed to shake his hand. “Wait, you’re Abbie’s father?”
“She’s told me a lot about you.” He smoothed back his crew cut gray hair with one hand. “I’ll keep this short. You have a lot of friends in here. We’re going to sort out this thing with Dr. Müller. We have to. Humanity is counting on us.”
He said this without a hint of irony or humor.
Jess wasn’t sure what to say, so just replied: “Thank you.”
“No. Thank you.” General Marshall seemed like he almost going to salute her. “You are an example we should all wish to aspire to.” He turned his head to address Durand. “I leave her in your care.” He nodded, then nodded at the guards who opened the door again.
“Short but sweet,” Jess said as he walked out of sight down the hallway.
“We’ll get you out of here in a few hours,” Durand said. “I promise.”
He collected his briefcase.
And a few seconds later, he was gone too.
Jess lay back on the foam mattress. Ufuk was right. She needed friends.
The promised few hours stretched out i
nterminably. Without a clock, it was impossible to tell the time. Jess yelled every now and then, demanded to see someone, banged against the thick glass wall, but there was no response. Just the hum of the air circulating, the low thrum of machinery somewhere deep below the rock. Eventually, the LED overhead lighting dimmed, and Jess’s elation—at the prospect of being released—ebbed with it. Tired, she pulled blankets over herself and slept, and woke up only when the lights blinked back on.
She spent the day pacing in tight circles.
After a few hours she discovered that they’d left the charging cable for her leg, so she amused herself by plugging it in, then bouncing up and down on it for as long as she could until it depleted. Every now and then—for good measure—she yelled and screamed, more in frustration than imagining it would help.
The lights dimmed again.
This time sleep came more slowly.
They came for her in the middle of the night. Men in the coal-black uniforms of the San EU military, with gloved hands that seized her and shook her roughly awake, and bright light that flooded into the cell and blinded her. She tried to find her feet, tried to find a stable stance from which to fight, but instead found her legs kicked away as they bound her hands and pulled her out of the tiny room.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “Where are you taking me?”
They dragged her down stairs. A stretch of stark gray corridor led to a single desk, behind which sat a man. Strip lighting buzzed and ticked. Exposed pipes ran along the ceiling and flooded the place with wet heat. Two more black-uniformed soldiers hovered in each corner behind him. Above one of them was a video camera.
They sat her roughly and secured the handcuffs to a bolt on the edge of the table.
“What is going on? Where is Michel Durand?”
“I would like you to watch something,” the man said. He wore a dark blue suit and a signet ring on one hand. He was much older than her, with short silver hair, yet his face was lean and tanned. “I don’t want you to speak until you’ve seen it. You and I will then have more than enough time to talk about what you’re going to do next.”
Jess couldn’t place the man’s accent. European, but where she couldn’t say. His English was perfect. The screen illuminated and images appeared. She recognized the place they showed—the terrace coffee shop she’d talk with. The fountain in the gardens still glistened in the diffuse light. Children skittered and played.
Then it was gone.
The image shook, and in place of the terrace and the gardens came a fleeting blur of brilliant white, followed by a seething, billowing flush of smoldering gray. Debris scattered.
Jess knew what she was watching.
“The bomb went off twenty-eight hours ago,” the man said. “Emergency services are still sifting through the wreckage. At this time, we know fifteen people were killed, including three children.”
Jess’s heart jumped into her throat. Hector. But he wasn’t one of the children she saw, was he? She would have recognized him. No. It wasn’t him, but she didn’t doubt this stern-faced man. Three children. “Who was responsible?”
“You should know that everything you say in here can be used as evidence against you.”
For a moment, she didn’t understand, then the implication came like a punch in the gut. “You think I did this?”
“You tell me.”
“I’ve been locked up in here for two days. And I was a US Marine. I couldn’t possibly kill a child.”
“But you’re no stranger to killing, Miss Rollins, are you?” He snorted. “And US Marines have never killed children?”
She didn’t take the sarcasm bait. “I want to see Michel Durand.”
The man turned the tablet to face her. “Do you know this woman?”
Jess found herself staring at the face of Massarra. She nodded. Had they found her? “She’s an Israeli. She rescued me first in Rome, and then again from the Vivas facility near Rome, in Italy.”
“Rescued you twice? So you’re friends?”
Jess sensed thin ice. “I wouldn’t say friends. It was a desperate time.”
“Why did she rescue you?” He paused before adding: “Twice.”
Jess didn’t know how much to reveal, how much of what she could say might incriminate her further in their eyes. “She worked for an organization that had an interest in my father’s work.”
“Your father was Dr. Ben Rollins. Is that correct?”
She knew enough of interrogations to be careful with stupid questions. “You already know that. He and Dr. Müller worked together.”
“What organization did Massarra Mizrahi work for?”
“She called it the Levantine Council.”
“Had you ever heard of it before?”
She shook her head and shrugged.
“Are you aware it has links to Hezbollah? To Daesh?”
He was so calm, so placid. As though he were cross-examining her about a visit to a summer fair rather than links to the world’s most extreme and violent terrorists.
“She said it wasn’t terrorist. That they were a peaceful organization.”
“Did she ever display a particular skill set in the time you spent with her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Could she fight? Shoot?”
“I don’t see what—”
“Did she ever kill anyone?”
The question caught her off guard. “We were forced to defend ourselves.”
“Is that a yes, Miss Rollins?”
Hesitation, then: “Yes.”
Another image appeared on the screen. This time it was Ufuk Erdogmus. “Do you know this man?”
“Of course I do.”
“His name please.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—”
“Do you refuse to answer the question, Miss Rollins?”
“It’s Ufuk Erdogmus.”
“And you know Mr. Erdogmus, don’t you?”
“Only recently. He’s the one that rescued me from Müller.”
“You have a robotic prosthetic, Miss Rollins, is that right?” More images appeared on the screen, from her surgical procedure, from inside his laboratory. “Who provided that for you?”
“Ufuk Erdogmus.”
“Do you have any idea the cost of this leg?”
She shrugged again. She had literally no idea.
“Seems a very big gift from someone you barely know.”
“What do you want?”
The man got up and began pacing. “Mr. Erdogmus is missing. He cannot be found anywhere within Sanctuary Europe. Do you have knowledge of his whereabouts?”
“I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know he was missing.”
“Of course not.” He sat again in front of her. “Tell me about the Vivas facility outside Rome. You’re aware it was destroyed?”
“I was there. You know that.”
“Were you also aware that it was Mr. Erdogmus’s drones that were responsible for the attack on that facility?”
She didn’t respond.
“Did you plan that with Erdogmus? Was it your intention to ensure Dr. Müller was present when the attack took place?”
“If that were the case, it was pretty badly planned. I almost got killed.”
“I’d like to ask you about the coffee shop. You’ve been there several times?”
She shook her head. “I’m not answering any more of your questions. I want to see Michel Durand before I say anything else.”
“Why were you talking with General Marshall’s daughter at the coffee shop?”
“I’m not saying anything else to you. You may as well take me back to my cell.”
“You would be wise to cooperate, Miss Rollins.”
She didn’t reply.
For the next two hours, they raked her over the same ground but in more detail. In her head she was back at Pickel Meadows in the Sierra Nevada, undergoing the survival and resistance training she’d had in the Marines. Back then she had envisag
ed the Taliban sitting across the table from her. She had never imagined it might one day end up being something like this, that she might be the one accused of terrorism. In her mind she recited the six articles of the Military Code of Conduct over and over, reminding herself who she had once been and who she might now need to be again.
Chapter 3
Sanctuary Europe
Massarra arrived two hours early and studied everyone who came and went, taking note of recurring faces and those who seemed to idle without purpose for too long. The message she found in the dead-letter box, in fact nothing more than a tiny plastic pouch taped behind some exposed high joists in one of the quieter sectors of the complex, gave a location, a time, and a simple description.
When she'd first climbed down through the secret access tunnel and into Ufuk’s private gardens, the shock and awe left her dumbfounded for a moment. The green trees. Blue skies. Birds singing. She’d almost let her guard down, but she was too well trained.
The place was crawling with security. Locked down. Drones buzzing everywhere overhead. She knew they were looking for her, but she came anyway. They wouldn’t dream she’d hide right under their noses; this was one way of staying hidden. Ufuk had also provided her with a synthetic-skin mask for over her face. She doubted it would stand up to direct scrutiny, but then she also had on a baseball cap and wore the San EU military police uniform. Nobody would be looking too closely at her, and she didn’t need that much time.
When the man she was meeting finally did arrive, identified by the clothes the message had indicated he would be wearing, he took a seat toward the edge of the park. She surveyed the scene, watching for familiar faces. Only when she was ready did she sit on the bench, some way from the man. In her breast pocket, she clicked on an electronic jammer.
“You’re late,” he said quietly.
She stared straight ahead.
“My name is Michel Durand,” the man said. “I am a prosecutor with the Office of Judicial Affairs. Dr. Müller’s case was mine to prosecute. I’m not sure…”
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 6
