Phantom

by Ted Bell

  “M’lord,” Pelham said, floating into his dressing room, “you don’t intend to wear that jacket on this sojourn, I’m sure.”

  “This jacket? Yes. Why, is something the matter with it?”

  “A number of things. The color, of course, is ghastly. A poisonous shade of blue. But the real difficulty lies in the fact that it glimmers.”

  “Glimmers?”

  “The fabric. It’s shiny, sir. No more need be said.”

  “Pelham, I’m going to California. Everything glimmers in California. I assure you this jacket will go entirely unnoticed.”

  “If you say so, sir. In point of fact, I came upstairs to raise another matter.”

  “Yes? Go on,” Hawke said, peering at his jacket in the mirror. It was a bit flash, to tell the truth. He shed it and slipped into a thin black cashmere blazer over grey flannel trousers. He looked at Pelham, who nodded his approval.

  “You were saying?” Hawke said.

  “All this new household staff you’ve hired, m’lord. Underfoot, nosy, and frightful gossips.”

  “Pelham, you should consider yourself fortunate. You now have a cook, parlormaid, chauffeur, laundress, and butler to lord it over.”

  “With respect, I am the butler.”

  “The word doesn’t begin to do you justice. During all those years when it was just the two of us. But now we have a child in the house, Pelham. And his bedridden nanny. And his bedridden nanny’s private nurse. You simply cannot keep up with all that, dear fellow. It wouldn’t be fair of me to let you try. Besides, you’re king of the castle now, lord of the manor while I’m away.”

  Pelham uttered the smothered “ahem” he always used to express irritation.

  “It is not my intention to ‘lord it,’ as you put it, over anyone, dear boy. You have never once ‘lorded it’ over me. If I must accept this unfortunate situation, I shall most certainly follow your sterling example.”

  “Very kind. That’s settled then. Now. As to ties—how about this one?”

  “They don’t favor neckwear over there, sir.”

  “Really? How on earth would you know that?”

  “The telly, sir. Have you not perhaps seen a program called Real Housewives of L.A.?”

  Hawke was meeting Congreve at his private hangar at Gatwick in one hour. His airplane was wheels-up half an hour after that. If he was going to be on time, he needed to get cracking. He looked at his watch. Alexei was taking his nap, but Hawke needed to say good-bye. This would be only the second time they’d been apart since their Siberian train journey together. It was so recent, and yet it felt like they’d always been together.

  The two of them, against the world.

  He cracked the door to the nursery and peeked inside. Alexei had crawled out of his bed and was on the floor playing with his fleet of wooden boats. The very same ones Alex had used to re-create the great sea battles of the Royal Navy when he was a child. He’d held on to them all these years, not because he’d expected to have a son one day, but because he had so desperately hoped he would.

  “Daddy! Look! A boat!”

  Hawke crossed the room and sat on the carpet next to Alexei.

  “Yes. Your grandfather was on a boat like that during the war. A destroyer. Slightly larger version, of course.”

  “Daddy, is Spooner going to die? Because the bad horse ran over her?”

  “Of course not. She’s going to be good as new. She just needs a week or so in her bed and then—”

  “I don’t like her nurse.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “She smells funny.”

  “But she’s very nice. And she likes you awfully much. She told me so herself. She said you were the best little boy in all the world.”

  “I like her.”

  “Come give Daddy a hug. I have to go away for a few days.”

  “Away?”

  “Yes. To another place. Remember when Daddy went to France and Russia? Like that.”

  “Not home?”

  “Don’t cry, come give me a kiss good-bye. I’ll be back before you know it. All right?”

  Alexei, his eyes brimming with tears, hugged his father as hard as he could.

  “I love you, Daddy. More than anything in the whole wide world.” Hawke could feel his son’s hot tears wet upon his cheek.

  “And I love you more than the whole wide world, too. Be a good boy while I’m gone. Spooner’s going to read you a story in her room every night. Say your prayers and go straight to bed when Pelham tells you to, okay?”

  “I like Pelham.”

  “He took such good care of me when I was your age. I like him, too. More than most people, in fact.”

  Hawke picked his son up in his arms and kissed each cheek.

  “Good-bye, Alexei. I’ll miss you.”

  “Bye, Daddy.”

  “May I come in?” Hawke asked at Nell Spooner’s door. She was propped against her pillows, reading a book he had given her called Amsterdam, a novel by Hawke’s favorite living English author, Ian McEwan.

  “You were right,” she said, putting the book down. “It’s truly wonderful. He writes like an angel.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better today, thank you very much. Are you headed to the airport?”

  “I am. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  “Then come sit on the bed, hold my hand, and say it properly.”

  Hawke sat, taking her hand.

  “Nell, I am so sorry. So very sorry this happened. I swear to you, I will never let it happen again.”

  “Well, that’s very sweet. But you have to understand this is what I do. I protect people. Or try to, anyway. And sometimes I get hurt. This is not the first time, or the worst time, and it will probably not be the last. Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  “And my son. You saved his life, Nell. Twice. And mine, too, probably. I don’t think I could live without him now. I don’t know how I lived without him before.”

  She smiled and squeezed his hand.

  “He’s a little you,” she said.

  “Or I’m just a big him,” Hawke said, and she smiled.

  “You know, Alex, when I first accepted this assignment, it was just a job. But, now, I feel, I don’t know, like it’s so much more than that. How to say it? It’s not my job to be protective of him anymore. I feel protective of him. Does that make any sense?”

  “It does. I tried to thank you, in the hospital, for what you did. Your incredible courage. I don’t think I did a very good job. But I do thank you, Nell, for saving him. For saving both of us.”

  “You’re very welcome, sir. Now, you’d better go. You’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “There’s an MI6 officer in the house, just arrived this morning. He’s in a small room at the head of the stairs. His name is John Mills. I’ve asked him to stop by and introduce himself. See if there’s anything you need or want.”

  “What I want is a curry with you in that little restaurant in Mayfair. When I’m back on my feet. Nurse says it won’t be long now.”

  “First night I’m back. Date?”

  “Date.”

  Hawke leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

  “See you in a few days, Nell.”

  “Be safe, Alex.”

  “You, too,” Hawke said, and rose from her bed and walked to the door and pulled it closed behind him.

  He paused outside her door for a moment and smiled. For the first time since age seven, when his parents had been murdered, he had a very real sense of family under his own roof.

  So much for the heart as hard as flint, he thought.

  Thirty-seven

  Palo Alto, California

  Heavy fog rolled in from the Pacific, shrouding the little two-lane road that wo
und upward through dense redwood forests. They’d followed Highway 101 south from the San Francisco Airport FBO for about half an hour, then taken the exit for Redwood City. Ambrose had called Mrs. Waldo Cohen from the FBO reception. Mrs. Cohen had given them instructions on how to find her house. Wouldn’t be easy, she’d said, but if they got lost, just call her.

  Hawke had hired a car from Hertz, a sleek black Mustang convertible with a massive protrusion on the bonnet. Their meager luggage barely fit into the boot, but Hawke loved the car on sight nonetheless. Ambrose, who owned a vintage Morgan, had turned his nose up at it, and there’d been a bit of a tiff at the Hertz counter.

  “Really, Alex. How about a nice Cadillac, or a Lincoln?” Congreve asked, sensibly enough.

  “This is California, Ambrose. Surf City. Ventura Highway. Hotel California. I’m not pulling up to the Hotel California in a bloody Cadillac, I’m sorry.”

  The two men had talked about the seemingly related series of attacks long into the night, across the Atlantic, and then high above the vast America. Neither had gotten much sleep despite the fact that the Gulfstream’s cabin had two beds made up. The subject was fascinating. Sophisticated weapons of war, seized by some unknown cyberwar phantasm, and turned catastrophically against their owners.

  Congreve was even more convinced these were not random events. Someone, some evil genius perhaps, had created powerful technology far beyond the known realm of modern science. And, he added, the attacks bore all the earmarks of the invasion of the Iranian nuclear facility by a cyberweapon that destroyed its target in complete secrecy and then vanished without a trace. “Everyone suspects Israel, of course,” he said, “but there’s absolutely no way to prove it.”

  “Yes,” Hawke agreed. “Just like the Nevskiy, Air Force One, Fort Greely, and Israel’s robotic stealth fighter. No one has a clue how to even begin looking for the culprit. This is just the beginning of a wholly new kind of war. And I, for one, don’t like it.”

  They caught glimpses of the nickel-colored San Francisco Bay on their left as the road, called the Skyline, snaked along the tops of the mountains. The trees were magnificent, great dark monuments, climbing skyward and disappearing into the grey fog. There was a light, misty rain, and it was almost dark as night. Hawke had the wipers on now, and the headlamps as well, even though it was an hour or so until sunset.

  “I like this place,” Congreve said, leaning his head back against the headrest, peering out his rain-streaked window. “These foggy woods. This winding road. The dripping trees. I feel like I’m in an old Humphrey Bogart movie.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Hard to say, really. The road, the weather, the black trees. It all feels very ‘film noir’ to me. Like some gumshoe in a black 1934 Ford coupe is following us, tailing us, desperate to learn the location of the hideout where we stash all our ill-gotten lucre.”

  Congreve cleared his throat and slipped into his very credible Edward G. Robinson impersonation. “We’re on the lam, see? Yeah, that’s right, on the lam. And that gumshoe’s right on our tail.”

  “Ambrose, what are you on about? Gumshoe?”

  “What they call a guy with a private-dick license.”

  “This private dick of yours?” Hawke asked. “The one who’s on our tail?”

  “Yeah, what about him? I’ll get him, the dirty rat.”

  “If he’s so private, how will you know if he’s got a gun in his pocket, or he’s just glad to see you?”

  Hawke smiled, keeping his eyes on the dark, rain-slick road ahead. In addition to his lifelong idol, Sherlock Holmes, Congreve adored the old black-and-white mystery films of the ’30s and ’40s. Hawke was accustomed to the quixotic reveries of his companion. Once launched, he was unstoppable.

  “Of course he has a bean-shooter, pal, yeah, course he does, he’s a shamus, a copper, a flatfoot, ain’t he? A snub-nosed .38 in a shoulder holster. He calls his heater Betsey.”

  “Quite a vivid imagination, Constable. You’ve got the lingo down, perhaps you should write a mystery story.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Simply part of the deductive process. Reconstructing the crime scene.”

  “While you’re reconstructing, could you keep an eye out for the Cohens’ mailbox? It should be coming up on the right.”

  “Sure thing, boss. You’re the mug running this outfit. I’m only your triggerman.”

  “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t a movie.”

  “You said it yourself, back at the airport. The Hotel California. It’s Hollywood, isn’t it? Tinseltown, U.S.A. You know, I’ve never been before. Quite exciting, really.”

  “This isn’t Hollywood, Ambrose. Hollywood is in Los Angeles. This is San Francisco. We’re over three hundred miles from Hollywood. A seven-hour drive.”

  “Oh, well, it’s all California, isn’t it? The Coast, I believe they call it? One big la-la-land? What’s your beef, chief?”

  Receiving no reply, Congreve was silent for a while. He saw a little Italian restaurant nestled among the trees with Christmas lights in the window; it looked like just the kind of gin mill where Bogart might take Bacall for a martini on a rainy night like this.

  “Cohen,” Ambrose said, “coming up in a couple of hundred yards. Better slow down.”

  “I see it, I see it.”

  Hawke braked and turned sharply into the narrow driveway. It was leading steeply upward, deeply rutted and muddy, the soil dark red in the headlight beams. The looming trees on either side were walls of immense black columns. In a few minutes, they came to the stone house. A white two-story stucco building, probably built in the 1920s, with a steeply pitched slate roof and a smoking chimney. A quaintly eccentric, storybook bungalow, nestled under the trees, and if Congreve had to name the most likely architects, they would be Walt Disney and Snow White.

  The house stood back from the drive, across a wide space that might once have been a lawn but was now overgrown with knee-high ferns. The lights were on, both upstairs and down, and the two men climbed out of the car and made their way up the stone walkway to the front door. Rain dripped softly off the slanting tiles of the roof.

  “Push the doorbell, Bogie,” Hawke said.

  “Aw, go soak your head. Push it yourself.”

  “My head’s already soaking,” Hawke said, pulling up the collar of his trench coat. “It’s raining, as you may have noticed.”

  Hawke gave Congreve a look and pushed the button, pleased at the pleasant chimes he heard beyond the door.

  A small woman with snow-white hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head answered the door moments later. She wore a straw hat that might have been cut from the thatched roof of an English cottage. Dressed in a simple grey dress with an open brown knit sweater, she had deep-set, keenly intelligent brown eyes, and a round face. It was clear she’d once been a beautiful woman, for she still was.

  “Mr. Hawke and Mr. Congreve, I assume. So. You found me, did you?” she said with a smile. “Come in out of that rain. Isn’t it awful? Hardly rare, but still, one tires of it.”

  The three of them had tea in front of a crackling fire in the cozy living room, three overstuffed chairs on the hooked rug facing the hearth. She politely inquired about their transatlantic voyage, England’s new prime minister, the Royal wedding, and which horse might win the Epsom Derby. Then they turned to the business at hand.

  “I’m quite happy to see you,” she said. “I had so hoped Director Kelly at the CIA might believe me and the next thing I know, Scotland Yard shows up at my door. You’ve a great reputation, Chief Inspector Congreve. I googled you just this morning. I am a Sherlockian, you see. I noticed that you admire Holmes as well.”

  “I worship daily at his altar,” Congreve said, not completely kidding, Hawke thought, but still, laying it on a bit thick.

  Hawke said, “Dr. C
ohen, I wonder if you might recount the events of the evening your husband died? Director Kelly told us your suspicions, of course, but we’d like to hear it from you.”

  “Please call me Stella.”

  “Sorry. Stella, what makes you think your husband was murdered?”

  She told them, in precise detail, what had happened that night.

  Congreve said, “And this note you found afterward, do you still have it?”

  “Yes, Chief Inspector, it’s right here, folded inside my book.”

  She handed Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet to a smiling Congreve.

  Ambrose examined the scrawled note and handed it to Hawke.

  “The name Darius, Stella, does it mean anything to you?” Hawke said.

  “Yes. And I’ve been thinking about it. Waldo had a student—this was years and years ago—named Darius. He was a brilliant young physicist, postdoc, and he was instrumental in Waldo’s work in the field of AI. You both know what AI is, of course?”

  “We do.”

  “I am a physicist myself. I was acting as Waldo’s assistant at that time. Project Perseus, it was called. Federal funding. Oh, it was all so exciting. We knew we were on the verge of something—enormous. Something that could change the very fabric of human existence.”

  “In what way, Stella?” Congreve said.

  “In every way. As Waldo frequently said, ‘Nothing will ever be the same, Stella.’ ”

  Ambrose said, “Tell us about Project Perseus. Don’t worry about confusing us with scientific jargon; we’ll muddle through.”

  “Quite simply, the endgame was to create machine intelligence that could match, and then vastly exceed, human intelligence. Mammalian brains are quite limited, you see. Dreadfully slow. Because of the distance between intraneural connections in your brain. Outdated technology, compared to the minute nanodistances in a modern chip, such as in your cell phones. And, most important, the tiny confines of the human skull. Machines have neither of those limitations. Quite the opposite, in fact.”