by PJ Manney
Tom kissed him back, as every cell in his body yearned to disembowel Carter. His kingdom for a shiv.
The master bedroom door creaked slightly as it opened. Carter pulled away, but not quickly enough.
Amanda poked her head out. “I thought I heard you . . .” She paused at the sight of the two men standing too close. Stricken, she lowered her eyes and slipped back into the room, shutting the door.
“Shit . . .” muttered Carter.
“We both have a lot to lose in this scenario,” said Tom gently. “Good night.”
In his darkened guest suite, Tom appeared to sleep in an enormous eighteenth-century four-poster bed. Since he had left camp, Miss Gray Hat had hacked for inside information on 10/26 through known ATEAMO and Phoenix Club members’ e-mail accounts, financial records, and computer histories. She transmitted it now to Tom—travel plans, communications history, corporate involvements and business transactions—confirming the secret leader of the ATEAMO cells was Bruce Lobo.
After reviewing her data on his mind-screen, he mentally cracked into the Potsdam home-surveillance system. Its security layers were not as deep as he expected. From their video feed, he observed all the occupants in the house from hidden cameras in their bedrooms. Rosinda and Tony slept in their quarters on the third floor. But the huge master bedroom contained only Amanda, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Carter slept in another bedroom down the hall. He wondered how often the couple slept apart and was pleased he had sown distrust between the two.
When he cycled back to the master bedroom camera, Amanda was sitting up in bed, HOME remote in hand. The room’s only light came from the security camera feed on her bedroom screen. He watched her as she watched him, apparently asleep in his bed. Was she wondering about her husband’s new friend and partner? Her worried expression filled his mental screen for eighteen minutes before she turned over and closed her eyes. However, she kept her monitor on, his virtual image sleeping in the room with her.
She unbalanced him. If he didn’t deal with her soon, he’d make a fatal mistake.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Amanda snuck out of the house before sunrise for a gentle jog down Broadway west into the Presidio. Tom dressed quickly to follow, with his own excuse of an early morning stroll and armed with his GO-B’s GPS, audio-earbud in his right ear and Hoover cane, allowing him independence and an ability to find his way home unsighted. Having RFIDed her the night before, he followed her GPS mark on his mental map.
She took the Presidio woods trail as Tom closed in behind her. Alone and hidden by the trees, Tom folded and pocketed his cane, then broke into a run-off trail through the underbrush to intercept her. He scooped up a broken branch with a thick, sharp, jagged point. Holding it tight, he hid behind a tree, watching her virtual blip come closer to his location . . . closer . . . closer . . .
Lightning quick, he made an upward jab into her solar plexus. She doubled over, gasping for breath, as he threw her over his shoulder and carried her into the trees while holding the sharp stick to her temple.
“Be quiet or you’re dead,” he hissed.
There was a hillside depression where no one could see them from a path or road. He slid down the incline and nestled her in a V between two large boulders and knelt in front to block her escape. She was still recovering from the hit. He had to make a final decision quickly. San Francisco was waking up.
Gasping for breath, her eyes scoured his face for something, anything she could understand. “I knew you’d follow me . . .” she whispered.
His voice sounded reasoned, but it took extreme control to stop trembling. “Listen carefully. I can replace security footage with anything I want. No one will know we’ve been here. When they find your body, they’ll assume some transient psycho killed you. And if I don’t kill you now, I can kill you at any time, even if you turn me in. I’m not alone in this, and you’ll never see it coming. Do you understand me?”
She nodded her head furiously.
“Why are you watching me?” he demanded. In his rage, he shook her shoulders harder than he meant, and her head thudded on a boulder. She yelped in pain.
“Please, Peter . . .” She tried not to cry. “You’ve hurt me every way you could . . . and I probably deserve it . . . but don’t hurt the baby.”
The leaves on the branches overhead ceased their rustling to wave slowly through the air. He watched two ants in a titanic struggle over a piece of dead beetle on the boulder’s face.
An eon later, she continued, “Yes, I know who you are.”
“When?”
“When I said good-bye in LA. But I don’t know how. Or why . . .” Her eyes became watery. “How can I be afraid of the man I’m afraid for every day? And I don’t know why!”
“Afraid for me? You did this to me!”
“What?” Months of fury burst to the surface. “You did this to me! You left me! I thought you died! And now you’re . . .” she looked at him in confusion. “I don’t even recognize you! Why did you leave me? I thought you loved me! And what are you doing to Carter?” Tears cascaded down her cheeks. “I did everything you said. I took the cash and ran . . . I hid . . . I cut my hair, bought old clothes, lived in a motel outside Bend . . . but you never came to find me. Then they said you were a terrorist!”
“You know it’s a lie.”
“I thought so. But you hear it so often, you think, ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s crazy . . .’ ”
“So your only recourse was to fuck Carter?”
“I waited for months for you, but the money ran low. And I didn’t know what to do. So I turned up at his house one night . . . He took me in. Promised to protect me from them . . . whoever ‘them’ is; I still don’t know, he won’t tell me. I don’t know what to believe anymore; everything’s turned around. You can’t blame me for thinking you were dead. The whole world thinks you’re dead.”
“They also think I’m a terrorist.”
Her face betrayed doubt.
“Mandy, we were together since we were nineteen years old. We worked with each other every day for ten years. You would have known.”
“But Carter thought . . .”
“No! He wants . . .” But he stopped. He wasn’t ready to destroy everything with the truth. “He wants you . . . He wanted you to love him. And maybe he thought tarnishing your memory of me would help.”
Amanda squinted in disbelief. Who needed a polygraph or increased cybernetic intelligence to tell the truth from a lie? An ex-wife would do just as nicely. “And what do you think you’re doing with him?” she spat.
The words tumbled out before he could stop them: “Do you even sleep with him?”
“Yes!”
“I mean, you have sex?”
“Yes! We do!” She choked on sobs. “We love each other . . .”
“The guy wants to fuck me! How can he love you . . . like that?”
“How can you love . . . a woman like Talia?”
“Talia?”
“She looks like . . . a bimbo. A plaything . . .”
“I thought you were dead! We looked for you everywhere I could think of. And then, when I found you living with Carter, I assumed you . . . you wanted me dead.” It sounded ridiculous when he said it aloud. He tried to get back to the subject at hand. “And Talia’s not a lesbian!”
“Carter’s bisexual. There’s been an attraction since freshman year.”
His right palm slammed the boulder an inch from her head, killing the two ants. Conflict averted.
Shocked by the violence, she choked back tears again. “It’s the truth. We were destroyed when you died. We had no one but each other. We’re together because we loved you, Peter. It was always about you.”
“Carter wasn’t destroyed . . .” he snapped between gritted teeth.
“Yes he was! You weren’t there. You don’t know . . .”
“Mandy, I know things about him . . .”
“STOP IT! JUST STOP IT!” she screamed in jagged, ugly sobs, clamping her hands t
o her ears.
He stopped. She’d have time and reason to cry over Carter soon enough. They didn’t speak for a minute while she hiccupped, trying to stuff her grief inside.
Gently, she took his grazed hand, bleeding from slugging the rock, and kissed the wound. Then she placed it on her belly. The fetus was still tiny and yet a mental roundhouse kicked Tom. He was lucky to be on his knees or it would have knocked him over. Barely breathing, he covered his face with both hands and rocked back and forth in the dead leaves and brittle pine needles.
“It’s mine?” he choked out.
Shocked, she nodded her head and whispered, “I used your sperm, left over from our last IVF. Carter doesn’t know. I’m naming him Peter.”
She was innocent. And having his son. Peter.
He had almost done something too horrible to contemplate. “Peter? Dear God, what am I doing here?”
An urgent internal message arrived from Talia. She had only succeeded in stopping three out of four couriers that left from the camp as directed by Bruce, and there may have been others unidentified. Bruce was suspicious and had created multiple decoys. Therefore, they had to assume at least one of the couriers had made it to the DNA lab.
The odds had spoken. Peter Bernhardt was revealed. And Bruce would decide who would know.
He staggered to his feet and lifted Amanda to stand with him. “You have to go home. Now. None of this happened.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just remember this: I’m doing the best thing for everyone. Anytime you don’t understand, remember that.”
Then he ran, calling a taxi to meet him at the corner of California and Lyon and take him to North Field, where Talia had a jet waiting. He sent apologies to Carter—an emergency had come up, and he had to return to LA immediately. He requested that the Prometheus meetings proceed without him. He’d attend them virtually.
Carter was the least of his problems right now.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Thirty thousand feet above the California coast, plugged into flowing data, Tom had an hour to consider scenarios, with no interruptions. All of them necessitated dealing with Bruce immediately, as opposed to later, when enemies might gain the upper hand. But his other mind-track obsessed about his encounter with Amanda and the unborn Peter. He had almost killed them. How did he become so unhinged? Was he like those poor soldiers, too aware of the bigger picture to kill, too emotionally crippled by their memories not to? And could he focus on the task at hand with the knowledge of his son’s existence?
Knowing he lacked objectivity didn’t release Carter, Josiah, or Bruce from responsibility for 10/26, or their future plans. By grasping the big picture, it was impossible not to be staggered and enraged by the enormity of the club’s plot against America and the world.
But at its core was a bewildering political dilemma that would only increase in complexity: If, as Josiah believed, the world was progressing faster than most humanity could comprehend, was democracy something that could still work if the populace didn’t understand the changes and their ramifications? Was Josiah’s opinion—that people were unable to grasp their problems or solutions—wrong? While Josiah’s solution was immoral, what alternative could Tom, or anyone, give that allowed progress to continue in everyone’s hands and not leave social decisions to a ruling elite? To deny humanity the benefits of progress, improvement, and growth was immoral as well.
But did people want to make up their own minds? Or was the majority’s secret desire to be ruled by a benevolent dictator, even though a dictator would never be benevolent? If he destroyed the club, at least one dictatorial force would be gone.
But he had more immediate problems than how to govern. If the Phoenix Club knew he was Peter Bernhardt, they could stop him easily. Every moment he lived was a moment they didn’t know his identity. And he couldn’t ask Talia, Ruth, or Steve to endanger themselves any longer. The only way to succeed was to transform into something the club could not anticipate—and eradicate ‘Peter Bernhardt’ for good.
He had to return to the Pequod as soon as possible to see just how far Ruth and Steve had gotten on their experimental nanobots. The three different injectable treatments would make him even more superhuman than he was now. And he had to have them—immediately. He would deal with the consequences afterward. If he survived.
He was in the backseat of his limo at Santa Monica Airport. A woman’s fist knocked on his passenger window. It was decorated with two ice cube–sized pavé-diamond rings and holding a solid-gold-and-diamond-encrusted GO, known as a GOld and very popular in Moscow.
He told his chauffeur to lower his window, and Vera stuck her head in.
“Hello, Tom,” she purred, an ironic smile on her glistening lips. “Bruce and I just returned from Silicon Valley, and he took the car to some silly meeting. I was calling for another, but now my white knight has arrived. Do you mind dropping me home?”
“My pleasure,” replied Tom.
Vera climbed in, slinking along the seat close to Tom. As the car pulled away, Vera fingered the controls, closing the passenger-driver divider.
“How bug-proof is this car?” She spoke quickly in Russian, and it took all of Tom’s dual concentration to translate via Internet, process the spotty aural translations, and reply back instantly in Russian, all while learning the language on the fly.
“Good enough for government work.” It didn’t sound as funny in Russian.
“Do not joke. Bruce knows you’re Peter Bernhardt.”
The name hung in the air. He quickly sent a message to Talia to tell Mr. Money and Dr. Who to disappear. The club would find out the money was missing and be looking for them.
“When?” Tom asked calmly.
“This morning. He analyzed the DNA sample last night.”
“Has he told anyone other than you?”
Vera shook her head. “He’s waiting to see what he can gain with it. You men and your stupid games. This is what got Tony killed.”
“Dulles?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know him?”
“After Tony left the CIA, he worked on the US aid to Russia scheme. It was really just money laundering with university economists and the World Bank. That’s what created the Russian oligarchs—money the US gave Russia in the form of economic shock therapy, which Yeltsin handed to former apparatchiks to privatize state assets. The Kremlin supports the oligarchs and the oligarchs support the Kremlin. And the club supports them both through the back door. And since no sane person reinvests profits in Russia, they buy the occasional European football team to give them somewhere to go on the weekends and send the rest to China or the US to buy influence or invest in your companies. Club-controlled companies.”
Tom never thought to look at the Russian angle to the club story, because it didn’t seem relevant. But was he missing something? Was Vera his mole? “What game got Dulles killed?”
“He knew something he shouldn’t and was trying to influence events. He wouldn’t tell me, but he did try to leverage information in the Russian sphere for information in the other.”
“Information?”
“Yes. He thought the Russians might be as unhappy with this turn of events as he. So he was going to give them information to do something about it. And I was to be the conduit. But he died before he could give it to me.”
She appeared to be telling the truth, as far as she knew it. But what was Dulles giving the oligarchs? The nanotech? The bot plot? A way to stop it? Peter Bernhardt? “And how did you fit in his strategy?”
“The oligarchs think I work for them because I provide information about all of you. Tony felt confident I worked for him, because I did the same for him. And really, there was little conflict of interest—they both want the same things—to make sure their money is well spent and to make more. So proving useful to both has kept me alive and given me my cut. And Bruce . . .” She sighed. “What we have is his version of love. And as your nation’s cultu
ral hero says, ‘He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’ ”
“Was anyone else working with Tony on this?”
“That’s like asking how many ride the Russian president’s coattails. It is a large, fluid, and unknowable number.”
“So if Dulles is dead, who’s your American contact?”
“Justin Dardanelles. He supposedly passes the information to Secretary Brant, but I have no proof. Dardanelles’s specialty is Russian mineral futures, so he might have his own game going directly with the oligarchs.”
Dardanelles was the steroidal financier who had shared Peter’s cabin at the first Camp Week.
“And what’s Bruce’s deal with you?”
“A piece of his action in his own scheme. More than I could ever make working for Russians and Americans.”
“But what is it?”
Vera hesitated for the first time. She had not wanted to go there if she could help it.
“Why are we having this conversation?” he pressed.
“I need to get out. Of everything. And no one, including Bruce, will like it.”
“I can’t help if I don’t know all you know.”
She sat demurely for the first time, hands folded in her lap, and violet eyes downcast, making her look a decade younger. Sadly, the rare display of modesty suited her.
“I also siphon information to Bruce.”
“What kind?”
“Whatever the johns say to me . . . and . . . leave behind.”
Information left behind. Tom wasn’t the only person from whom she had tried to harvest biological material. “DNA.”
“Bruce bases business decisions not just on pillow talk, but on the health prospects of my customers. We have a full genetic analysis of hundreds of club members, as well as oligarchs.”
“I assumed Bruce played the futures market with lives. What else?”
“I can infect them with genetically engineered viruses when necessary, for which I have been made immune . . . if, of course, it proves financially beneficial for us.”
“You kill members with a sexually transmitted disease for money?”
