by Colin Weldon
His imaging scanners flickered for a moment as his eyes caught something odd up ahead. He stopped and looked as a young boy stood and smiled. He was alone, about seven or eight years old with dark hair and large brown eyes. He was smiling at Tarsis. There was something else that made Tarsis check his imaging scanners again. The boy seemed to be semi- transparent.
“Chase me!” the boy shouted as he turned and began running down the tunnel.
Tarsis locked onto his face and started running it through every known database on the planet. There was something familiar about the boy. Something he was locked out of seeing. Something about his smile.
“Chase me!” shouted the boy as he continued to run down the long tunnel.
Tarsis continued to run through the facial recognition software but quickened his pace as he tried to catch up to the little transparent boy. Still, no hits on the boy’s identity, but there was something. Tarsis’s vision flickered momentarily as a heat warning began flashing in the upper right-hand corner of his vision. He needed to get inside. He started running down the tunnel, but the boy was gone. He enhanced his distance and zoomed as far as he could, but it was no use.
“You’ll never catch me Daddy!” said the boy’s voice echoing off the walls.
He stopped and checked the faces of the passers-by who were beginning to look at him oddly. He knew that voice. He stepped back and planted his back against the tiled wall. He looked left and right. Up ahead, a police officer was making his way towards him. Tarsis locked onto his face. The officer wasn’t looking at him and was probably just crossing the street like everyone else, but he decided to take no chances. He turned and began walking with purpose, the voice of the young boy still reverberating around his mind. He tried to search for the audio file, but it wasn’t there.
It made no sense to Tarsis. All audio was logged in the embedded waveform sensors behind his right ear. It had to be. He recorded the incident for diagnostic and left an image of the boy’s face on the top left-hand side of his vision. He regarded it, felt something, only for an instant, but something. Something powerful. Something painful. Then nothing. His vision flickered again as the heat warning indicator changed from yellow to red. He was late. Towards the end of the tunnel was a small door with a golden triangle shaped sign on it. Tarsis looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched. The police officer had passed him without so much as a glance.
He entered the sixteen-digit code on the keypad next to the door. He stepped inside and walked down a thin staircase and into another tunnel. This one, dimly lit with old light bulbs scattered across its rock face ceiling. He reached a metal door and stopped, turning for a moment at the sound of a laughing child. He saw nothing. He again tried logging noise for diagnostic but could not locate the file anywhere on his systems. He pressed his hand up against the scanner and the door slid open. The room itself was less than two meters squared and completely automated. Lit by overhead fluorescent lights and equipped with two coolant tanks placed side by side neatly on the wall to the left. Tarsis stepped inside the door, which automatically closed behind him. He moved towards an elevated computer console and logged in. One of the tanks opened, sliding its split glass covering into two separate parts. Tarsis began to undress, placing his clothes neatly on a small stool. He stepped, naked, into the tank and pressed his head back against the headrest. The glass doors closed neatly with a hiss. A syringe entered the base of his skull, and the world fell away. Somewhere, off in the distance, came the sound of a little boy’s laughter.
* * *
Local Time 23.13
Eddie looked out of the window of the unmarked Boeing 757 as it neared the tarmac of the main runway at Charles De Gaul airport. He watched as the lights marking either side of the ground blurred into one solid line of light and thought back to Gordon’s last words to him. “It was an honour serving with you”, he had said shaking his hand at the door to his heavily fortified house. The finality of his tone was chilling. Eddie tried to dismiss his apprehension as paranoia. It was hard to do, given the man’s previous life. He felt the gentle thud of the plane as the wheels made contact with the ground. He looked over at Hiran, whose head suddenly jerked upwards as he awoke from a deep sleep.
“What is it with you sleeping on planes, man?” Eddie said. “Lucky bastard.”
“It’s the motion, sends me straight off,” Hiran replied.
Eddie turned around to the seat behind him and saw that Abigail was deep in the middle of reading something. She had been unusually quiet since leaving Singapore. She met his eyes and unhooked her seatbelt, making her way around and sitting next to him. She looked troubled.
“Eddie,” she said pausing for a moment, “if you can get a shot off, try to hit her in the base of her skull,” Abigail said.
“Ok, you’re telling me this now because?” Eddie said
“The sleep phrases, like the one I told you to say to her on the ship were implanted into her psyche using a technique I developed. It’s a mixture of hypnosis and cognitive suggestion. It has a one hundred per cent success rate. It should have worked. If she’s found a way around them, then we have no option but to terminate her,” Abigail replied.
“I’m not through with her yet, Doc,” Eddie replied.
“Maybe not but it’s clear that she’s through with us,” Abigail said.
“Look, right now all we have to do is secure Royo before she does, or whoever is behind this does,” Eddie said.
“Then we should be talking to the secret service Eddie. They could have him contained in seconds. Why the communications black out?” Abigail replied.
“Because whatever is going on here is inside that brain of hers that you scrambled. I don’t like the idea of young men and women being ordered to their deaths and I want to find out who these people are and what they want,” Eddie shifted in his seat. “It’s time to get to work. Hiran,” Eddie said loudly across the isle. Hiran put his seat back in the upright position.
“I want a link-up to all satellite communications in the area including the secret service channels. I want to know every move the President is making in real time. I want you to set up an algorithm tracking police movements all around the city. If a single squad car makes any unusual moves or even switches on his lights for no good reason I want to know about it. Get facial recognition rolling on the airports. We have to assume she came in on an unscheduled flight so I want all surrounding airfield activity for the last sixteen hours. Get into the air traffic control radar system and pull any aircraft on their scopes that shouldn’t be there,” Eddie said injecting purpose in his tone. Hiran looked at him with sleepy eyes.
“Now Hiran!” he said forcefully.
Hiran jumped and began fumbling around in his backpack for his equipment.
“How do you plan on getting close to Royo?” Abigail said.
“I may not need to. I just need to get in a room with Todd Holt,” he said looking out at the tarmac as the plane turned off the main runway.
“Todd Holt?” Abigail said.
Eddie looked at her.
“Todd Holt is the head of the secret service detail attached to Royo,” Eddie responded.
“Any relation to…?” Abigail replied.
Eddie looked at his feet.
“Dylan? Yeah it’s his brother,” Eddie responded.
Abigail gave him a long gaze.
“You never told me that.”
Eddie looked away from her.
“Yeah well, it didn’t seem important at the time, besides I’ve never met him,” Eddie said.
“Not even at the funeral?” Abigail said.
“No, I wasn’t in any condition to be speaking to anyone that day and I left right after the service.”
His heart began to race as he forced unbidden images of Dylan being lowered into the concrete back into the black hole of his mind. He looked at Hiran w
ho had his face buried in his computer screen.
“Hiran can you localise one specific signal from one secret service agent and patch in a feed so that I speak them without being monitored?” Eddie asked.
Hiran blew out some air from his puffed up cheeks.
“Tricky, that system is hardwired into a local satellite with its own encryption proto…”
“I didn’t ask for a goddam science lesson Hiran; can you do it or not?” Eddie said.
Hiran looked taken aback by Eddie’s tone but he nodded.
“It will take a while,” Hiran said.
“Get on it,” Eddie said.
Abigail leaned in towards Eddie.
“You know you could try being nicer to him,” Abigail said.
Eddie sighed.
“Fine,” he said looking past her towards Hiran who had an expression on his face not unlike that of a lost puppy.
“Hiran,” Eddie said sticking his thumb up, “by the way, you’re doing a really good job.”
Hiran looked at him and frowned. Eddie had to admit that it came off sounding ridiculous so he just sat back in his seat.
“Happy?” Eddie said.
“Inspirational,” Abigail replied.
Charles De Gaulle Airport.
Paris
It was cold. There was a light rain coming off the runway as Eddie moved towards the rear of the hanger. Gordon had arranged special access out of the airport, which would avoid any security checkpoints or cameras. He had also arranged a car for them, which he assured Eddie would have weapons and other “toys” to aid them in their mission. They walked around to the rear of the large hanger where a black Mercedes was waiting. Eddie looked around. Most of the main activity was located on the active runways to the south. The hanger seemed to be deserted. Gordon’s reach even in retirement was still pretty impressive. He rounded the bonnet of the car and opened the door. The keys were in the ignition and the engine seemed to be running. The wind began to pick up and droplets were becoming more formidable. Eddie nodded to his team to get in.
“Well what have we got?” he said.
“Yeah, I can access the frequency but we have to be close, like really close, within two hundred meters,” Hiran said.
“Where is the President at the moment?” Eddie asked.
“That’s the easy part,” Hiran said, “He is staying at the Le Meurice, not too shabby. Uploading the location to the car’s GPS now.”
The dashboard suddenly came alive. A virtual map appeared with the route from their current location.
“Find us something next to it and get us a room; don’t use our names,” Eddie said.
“Obviously,” Hiran replied.
Eddie looked in the rear view mirror
“Sorry,” Hiran said.
Eddie kicked the car into drive. Gordon had cleared them a route out of the rear service gate. They had a ten-minute window to get out before the guards, who had been temporarily relieved of duty, returned. He put his foot down and the car took off at speed.
“Any hits on facial recognition or air traffic control?” Eddie said as he watched the road through the rain, which was coming down hard now.
“The algorithm is working; just a sec, I may have something,” Hiran said.
“Did she say she was going to kill the president herself?” Abigail suddenly said.
“What?” Eddie said.
“Nora. Did she say SHE was going to kill the president?” Abigail said.
Eddie thought for a second.
“No, she said THEY,” Eddie said.
Abigail remained silent.
“Ok, so not only did she give you some sort of heads up about the bomb, we can deduce that she herself is not intent on killing the president,” Abigail said.
“I guess,” Eddie said, not really following.
Abigail turned to Hiran.
“Then I think we’re looking for the wrong person, at least for now,” she said. “Hiran can get into Jaguar’s main frame?”
“That’s an instant location spike, they would know where we are in seconds, and if we’ve suddenly become expendable than that’s game over,” Hiran said.
“What are you thinking?” Eddie said as he approached a large metal fence. “Hang on a sec.”
He slowed the car. There was a large barrier next to a guardhouse. The barrier was up and the lights were off inside. Eddie frowned.
“Ok then,” he whispered to himself.
He pressed the accelerator and took the car straight through and onto the road, which ran parallel to the airport. They were out.
“MI6 eh?” Eddie said smiling to Abigail. “Those Brits sure know how to get the job done. Go on.”
“I think we should be trying to find Tarsis,” Abigail said.
“You seemed to think that would be bad,” Eddie said. “Besides, I think he’s going to find us a lot sooner than we’re going to find him.”
“That’s true,” Abigail nodded.
“We’ll deal with that when it arises. Let’s just focus on the president for now. Besides, we may now have an edge,” Eddie said looking in his rear view mirror at Hiran. “Open up the centre access to the trunk behind you.”
Hiran complied and opened up the pull-out leather divider and peered inside.
“Ok we have guns, very big guns,” Hiran said.
Eddie smiled at Abigail.
* * *
President Royo looked out at the glistening lights of the Eiffel Tower. The rain was falling hard against the glass as he leaned his shoulder on the window frame and folded his arms. He could not put his finger on it but there had been something odd, something beneath those obedient voices this evening. Or would Ginny say he was imagining things? He looked on as the rotating light on the top of the Eiffel tower spun around and remembered their trip here when they were both in college. Ginny had loved Paris, the romance and the accent and hot morning coffee and croissants. His nostalgic reverie was interrupted by a knock on his door.
“Come in,” he said not taking his eye off the famous landmark.
Todd Holt entered and closed the intricately decorated gold-leaf door behind him. Royo looked at Todd’s reflection in the glass.
“Don’t you boys ever sleep?” he said, turning around.
“Do you, sir?” Holt replied.
“No,” Royo replied.
“Then neither do I,” Holt replied.
Royo smiled and strolled over to the long white chaise lounge in the centre of the room.
“I don’t care very much for the decor in this place. Even the bath towels are gold leaf!”
“Yes sir, I noticed. Nice touch I thought,” Holt replied.
“Yeah well, try wiping your backside with em,” Royo said, “what can I do for you this evening?”
Holt laughed and handed Royo a folder.
“Last checks before the morning sir. We’ll be traveling in standard four car convoy. As always, if we call Code Blue, all you need to do is hold on tight and we’ll take care of the rest,” Holt said.
Royo nodded.
“I sincerely hope I never have to experience that,” he said.
“As do I sir, but it wouldn’t be something you’d have a say in,” Holt replied. “If you have any questions, sir, I’ll be across the hall as usual.”
Royo nodded and rubbed his eyes. He had to admit that he was starting to feel a little fatigued. Holt stood up and began making his way towards the door.
“Todd,” Royo said suddenly.
Holt paused.
“Anything unusual going on at the moment? Any unusual threats or intelligence communications in the last few hours?” Royo asked.
“The usual, sir, nothing I would worry about,” Holt said.
“The usual being?” Royo replied raising his eyebrows.
“Sir, we get on average a couple of hundred threats a day. We track every single one of them. Believe me when I say that today was actually a light day,” Holt said.
Royo nodded.
“Thank you Todd; have a nice evening.”.
Holt made his way out of the room. Royo looked up at the gold clock sitting on a marble mantle above a large fireplace. It read twelve twenty. He popped open the glass corker in the whiskey decanter and poured himself a measure. Lifting the heavy based glass, he walked back over to the window. The rain was still flowing steadily down the glass. The lights of the Eiffel tower suddenly went out. He took a sip. He felt the sting of the aged malt as it went down his throat.
“Well, happy birthday, Ginny, miss you babe,” he said trying to contain a lump which had formed in the back of his throat. It came out of nowhere. He felt his eyes tear up, and a single drop rolled down his cheek. He suddenly felt alone. He sensed a danger that he could not understand somewhere out there in the cold dark rain. Where was Wise? And why had he not contacted him? He took a breath and cleared his eyes, forcing the memory of his dead wife to the back of his mind. He needed sleep. Tomorrow he would sign the accord and then get answers. He would rein in Wise and take back control of his country for the people who had elected him there in the first place.
* * *
The car turned off onto Rue la Fayette and headed steadily towards the bottom of the street where Eddie wanted to loop the parameter to see where the secret service checkpoints were. It was getting late. He was pretty sure that Royo would be fairly untouchable in the hotel. Any attempt to kill him would be in transit or at the summit in Le Bourget, less than forty five minutes away. The rain had begun to ease, but the mist being thrown up from the street was giving the empty roads an eerie look. Strange shadows, which seemed to show human form and tricks of light as the car sped by, were making Eddie nervous. Was that someone staring at them on the sidewalk? He needed sleep. Streetlights bounced off the glass of parked cars. They had managed to book in to a small boutique hotel a half-mile down the road thanks to Hiran. They had hacked into the secret service frequency and Hiran was monitoring in the back seat. Eddie watched the street corners as they approached Avenue de L’opera, they were now less than a half a kilometre from Le Meurice.
