Collective Mind

by Klyukin, Vasily

  ***

  Bikie and Link came down to breakfast later than usual. They had already adapted to the New York time, no longer feeling like waking up at six in the morning, as they did the first few days.

  Isaac ordered breakfast in his room. He didn’t want Bikie to see Michelle, or he would torment Isaac with his comments; however, he still didn’t manage to avoid Bikie’s gibes. It looked like Michelle and Bikie had been in collusion from the very beginning.

  Going down into the lobby five minutes before they were due to set off, Isaac found the whole team gathered, including Pellegrini.

  “You owe me,” Bikie whispered in his ear with a smile. “Something in chrome.”

  Pellegrini gave Link his final instructions, then turned to the others. His special ops skills showed clearly. “After all,” Isaac admitted to himself, “things feel calmer somehow with Pellegrini.”

  “So, you and Bikie enter here, through the separate entrance for those with invitations. Make sure you haven’t forgotten them. Take your IDs. Then Link and I go in together,” the commissioner continued in a confident tone.

  Professor thought it over for a while and nodded.

  “The conference starts at ten. Since this is the opening, there will probably be a delay for about fifteen minutes, there are always organizational hitches. While there’s a crowd it will be easier for us to blend in. At 9:50 we all meet by the elevator.”

  “What about a pass for Link?” Isaac asked.

  “I took care of that, don’t worry. I made a colored copy of my own.”

  Isaac had time to call the hospital and talk to the doctor. Vicky was fine, she could come round at any moment. A promising way to start the day, although Isaac had been hoping to hear her voice before their plan was put in action.

  They reached the Museum, and leisurely walked inside. Link followed, Pellegrini was right behind him. Link held out his pass. He was asked about something and started explaining. At that moment Pellegrini pretended to stumble and shoved Link so hard that he almost went flying through into the hall, and barely kept his balance. Some coins, a pen, a dictaphone, scattered on the floor. Pellegrini immediately created a commotion, making fussy apologies, helped Link to collect things, accidentally on purpose having dropped his invitation and police badge. He picked them up and apologized at great length to the ticket inspector, whom he had also caught with his elbow. Tugging Link’s false pass out of the dumbfounded employee’s hand, he handed it to Link, apologizing yet again. Spotting the commissioner’s police badge, the inspector immediately calmed down. To be on the safe side, he also apologized because there was such a crush at the entrance. The crowd outside was swelling, and the inspector turned to the next visitor, trying to let people through more quickly.

  The incident was successfully closed. Pellegrini took Link by the arm and offered to show him to the restroom and help him get tidied up. The inspector carried on checking people coming in.

  Ten minutes later they all gathered by the elevator as arranged. They walked into the cabin and pressed the basement button. A little red lamp came on and Link pressed the stolen card against the terminal. The lift smoothly started downwards. Pellegrini was the first to the doors and walked out confidently. Link and Bikie followed him, with Isaac being the last.

  They were all in for a disappointment: they saw a glass partition, a lounge with sofas, doors to meeting rooms. Nothing resembling a laboratory or a server room. Isaac ran the full length of the corridor twice before it was finally clear that they had arrived at the wrong place.

  Pellegrini stopped a girl walking by, half-opened his jacket to show his badge and asked where the laboratory was.

  The frightened staffer explained that they had to go down one more level, and they all darted to the elevator, which was still standing there.

  There was another button below “-1”, but to press it you had to insert some kind of a key. Pellegrini pressed on the keyhole anyway, but the cabin didn’t move.

  “This pass doesn’t have clearance to go lower. Only this far, to the meeting rooms,” Link said disappointedly.

  Suddenly the lift started moving, but, alas, upwards - someone had pressed the call button. The lift skipped past the zero, first and second floors and the doors opened at the third. Two elderly men and a security guard were standing on the landing. Isaac’s heart sank into his boots.

  “I’m sorry, we need the lift. This is the service elevator. Could you please vacate the cabin?”

  They hurriedly got out. Link walked out with his head lowered, as if he was inspecting his shoes. The men got in and the doors closed.

  “That was Blake, the UN Deputy Secretary General,” Link explained gloomily. “The one I handed over the technology to before I went into hiding.”

  Meanwhile Pellegrini was counting something, looking down at the spiral walkway and the throng of people down below.

  “What are you counting, Pellegrini?”

  The commissioner ignored Isaac’s question and carried on counting.

  “They went down to minus two,” was the answer he gave later. “Or rather, minus two and a half. Obviously the ceiling must be one and a half times the normal height. That’s where we have to get into.”

  “Right, Link, you stay here,” said the commissioner, taking full control. The fact that only recently they didn’t trust him had been quickly forgotten, it was history. “Or better still, get away from here. You could be recognized. Who has the device?”

  “I do,” Bikie replied.

  “I’m coming too,” Link put in. “I have to be there.”

  “OK, you and Bikie go to the café and wait for our signal. “Isaac, go and mingle with the crowd and listen. Listen to everyone who looks like a local, an American. Follow what they’re talking about. Look for people who work in the building. We have to find someone who has a card with lower level access. If you find one first, call me, I’ll try to pinch it. Bikie, Link, if anything happens, leave.”

  Isaac and Pellegrini shot off downwards and separated, mingling with the crowd. Everyone was speaking English, but it was pretty easy to tell European English from the American one. Isaac listened intently to the conversations. People were swirling about and there was no way of telling who he had already listened to and who he hadn’t. But he tried at least to understand who worked there. He tried to stick to those who had bodyguards or were not carrying briefcases, which meant they could have an office in the building.

  Suddenly he heard a voice and looked around.

  “What’s going on here? He almost knocked an old man down at the entrance. Now he’s run into a security guard!”

  There was a commotion in the middle of the hall with Pellegrini.

  “He tried to filch my wallet,” a security guard exclaimed indignantly.

  Isaac tried to stick close and figure out what was happening. He couldn’t tell what trick the commissioner had pulled, apparently an unsuccessful attempt to steal the security guard’s key. In any case, everyone’s attention was on Pellegrini now. A security official came over and asked the commissioner to go with him to the same elevator that Isaac and his companions had been riding in only five minutes ago.

  It was a total catastrophe. Most of the audience and the delegates had already entered the conference hall, the lounge had thinned out. Isaac saw Link leaving the Guggenheim. Three minutes later Bikie made his way through to the exit. It was pointless to stay any longer. Bikie had gone out, taking the device with him. Pellegrini was gone too, and Isaac was alone. There was nothing else he could do except move towards the exit, especially since, apart from Guggenheim employees, there were no more than ten people left in the large lounge. He didn’t feel like going into the conference hall.

  ***

  Link hailed a taxi. Bikie got out halfway and set off on foot. Isaac also decided to walk, he was in no hurry and felt the needed to settle his nerves a bit. After all, at the final moment, the luck turned its back on them. The operation had failed miserably. Wh
o knew what was happening to Pellegrini now? Isaac tried to reassure himself that they couldn’t do anything to him. The security guard could have imagined it all, couldn’t he? Ingenious as he was, Pellegrini would wriggle out of it, he was sure. Besides, he was not linked to the team in any way.

  Only now, when Pellegrini was in danger, did Isaac start worrying about him and finally felt that he was a full-fledged member of the team. Any remaining traces of dislike and distrust were now a thing of the past.

  Pondering over what questions the commissioner might be asked, Isaac, who admittedly knew nothing about the police system and how it worked, was probably missing lots of important details. Probably there were heaps of different ways for them to get caught. Starting with any paper trail that might have been left after his interrogations in France and ending with the fact that Pascal, a Veggie, had flown to America.

  Pascal’s administrator could have suspected something; Link could have been caught on camera and identified. Or maybe Pellegrini himself had been under suspicion for a long time.

  An hour later, when Isaac reached the hotel, he called Bikie.

  “Everything’s cool,” Bikie told him. “Total calm at the hotel so far. Link and I are in a café on the corner of Madison and Fifty-Second.

  “I’ll be right there,” Isaac said.

  A few seconds later they were sitting together at an inconspicuous corner table in a small diner. They had coffee and the waiter brought sandwiches, but no one felt like eating.

  “What are we going to do, Isaac?” Bikie asked. “Any ideas?”

  In moments of danger and uncertainty like this, Isaac automatically found himself holding the reins again.

  “Let’s wait for Pellegrini first,” said the Professor. “Then it will be clear how badly our cover has been blown. Maybe everything is just fine, or maybe we need to flee.”

  Isaac was aware of Pellegrini’s importance for the whole operation and his specific role in the team. Things really did feel a bit calmer with him around, he brought a definite core of strength by rapidly devising a detailed minute-by-minute plans.

  “We have to get into the ‘-2’ level, otherwise nothing is going to work. That’s for certain. Today’s the opening, the conference is on for two more days. Then the museum will be operating as normal. There’s no point in leaving New York. We can’t get to the Russian and Chinese servers anyway, and the French one is no good. The only server we have any chance of getting to and hacking is here. So we can’t despair. When we came here, we weren’t counting on any conference and a week ago we didn’t have Pellegrini either. Basically nothing has changed. We just have more information,” said Isaac, trying to cheer everyone up.

  “Do you have any ideas about how to get into minus two?” Link inquired.

  “No. But we still have time. Plenty of it. We have money. There are three of us, it’s too soon to write off the commissioner, plus there’s Pascal in France, your assistant can come if needs be. We can look for allies here. There are loads of options, we’ll come up with something.”

  “We’ll get over-exposed at the Guggenheim very quickly if we go there every day,” Bikie remarked. “It would be good to find someone on the inside who would help us. You could try working on that chick, for instance. She liked you.”

  “No, I’m not going to. She’s not likely to have access to the level we need, and I’m certainly not prepared to give her any assignments. I didn’t spot any particular intelligence in her eyes.”

  ***

  Isaac got a brief text from Pellegrini, who wrote: “Everything’s OK. Will be there soon”.

  “Excellent. The commissioner’s fine,” Isaac gasped in relief. “Let’s not make any plans until we’ve heard his news.”

  But the commissioner only called Isaac two hours later.

  “Hello?” Isaac asked in the most casual voice he could manage. He was all set to add: “You have a wrong number.”

  “Everything’s fine,” he heard in reply. “Where do I go?”

  “Madison and Fifty-Second. Starbucks.”

  Bikie looked up in surprise.

  “There it is. Opposite,” Isaac explained. “From here we have a clear view of the entrance. If he doesn’t come alone, we leave.”

  “OK.”

  Fortunately Pellegrini was alone. Bikie ran to the Starbucks to fetch him and the commissioner told them what happened.

  He had actually visited level minus two. Not for long, only half an hour, but long enough to get some info. He was taken to an office. There were no real problems, they only asked him a few questions, all standard.

  “Of course, I was outraged by the way security had acted and the fact that I would miss the conference presentations,” the commissioner told them. “In the end, they let me go quickly and showed me to the conference hall. I had to stay there until lunch to avoid rousing suspicion.

  “All the signs are that our server is on level minus two. While they were taking me back, I asked to go to the bathroom. It was at the end of the corridor, so I examined almost half the level. That’s definitely where we need to go. They download creativity there too, I saw a notice on the door along with some posters with instructions. That’s in the left section of the corridor, looking from the elevator.”

  “Thanks, commissioner. That’s all very important, thank you, Luca.” It was first time Isaac had called Pellegrini simply by his first name. “Very useful information.”

  “Let’s meet in the lobby this evening,” Bikie suggested. “I’m tired, my head’s on the blink. Want to take a walk.”

  Everyone agreed. They all wanted to be alone with their thoughts. Isaac remembered about Vicky again. What a pity it was already evening in Monaco and he couldn’t phone the hospital. Maybe she had already come round?

  That evening Michelle wanted to come to see Isaac again and offer support. He wasn’t in the mood.

  “Isaac, why don’t I book us a ‘spa break for two’?” she suggested.

  “OK. But not today. Let’s see about tomorrow.”

  “There’s a really good salon. You’re bound to like it, you need a bit of rest and relaxation.”

  “A spa break for two? A good salon? So you’ve already been there?” asked Isaac, getting worked up.

  “Good grief, yes I have! With a girlfriend! Don’t wind yourself up. Why are you so edgy?”

  “I implore you, go back to Monaco. The last thing we need is to fight.” But after hearing about the girlfriend, Isaac calmed down.

  The salon and spa really were magnificent. And Michelle in a short little robe was super-sexy. They spent five hours there, and these were probably the best hours of Isaac’s life. He had to hand it to Michelle – despite her shrewd petulance and a habit of doing everything her way, he thought he ought to trust this unwomanly passion of hers for making independent decisions.

  Chapter six

  The team spent a few days thinking about what to do next. The conference had been over for two days now so that opportunity had finally been missed.

  Pellegrini’s official trip came to an end and he flew back, promising to come back immediately as soon as he was needed. Isaac saw him off to the airport.

  Pellegrini promised to promptly initiate paternity testing for Happies’ children with creativity and they agreed to stay in touch. Isaac had no doubt that now the head of the Orange Energy Department was more concerned with how to defeat a new target – UNICOMA, which meant, the commissioner’s steely grip and proficiency have been channeled in the right direction.

  Michelle had also had to fly back to Europe on some urgent business. Isaac was upset. He missed her, but on the other hand, without a plan he was sullen and too intense, his mood wasn’t conducive to a romantic relationship. On the contrary, he could spoil everything, as usual, so he thought it was for the good.

  Pascal had already set something up in case there were problems. They decided not to discuss the details on the phone.

  With no business in hand, Isaac decided to
visit the Guggenheim again. He wanted to take a look at how it was on usual days, see how many people there were, and all the rest of it. The girl who measured orange energy recognized him again and enquired if he had come back to download his OE after all. Isaac replied that he was still considering it, just had a couple of problems to deal with first.

  “Go for it, mister, with a fee as large as yours, I wouldn’t think for long. It’s simpler to download your energy and forget all your problems. With a huge payout like that!”

  Isaac stared at her, but didn’t respond, just thanked her for her advice and strode quickly out of the museum. He had been struck by a sudden inspiration.

  As soon as Isaac was out of the building, he called Bikie, with trembling fingers that could barely hit the right keys.

  “Bikie! I got it! I have a plan! A plan! And it’s simple – you won’t believe it!” Isaac exclaimed joyfully. “I’ll get a taxi and will be there in twenty minutes. Call the Professor.”

  “I’ll download my OE,” Isaac declared triumphantly when they were all together.

  He saw that they didn’t understand anything, so he explained.

  “When I go to download my OE, I’ll be right beside the server. I’ll take the hacking device with me. We will install a timer on it, to activate it a little bit later. Well, I’ll be a Veggie, I won’t be able to press the button! To keep it short, the device will hack into the server, and the OE I have just downloaded will come back to me. And to all the others.”