The Bancroft Strategy

by Robert Ludlum

  “Know what?” Walt pouted. “I’m beginning to think your boot ROM has a bad checksum.”

  “I’m guessing that, where you come from, them’s fightin’ words,” Belknap replied heavily.

  “Where are we headed, exactly?”

  “The Valley of Desolation,” replied Belknap.

  “You’re kidding,” Walt said

  “Look at a map.”

  “You’re not kidding,” Sachs said, and sighed. The ten-hour trip—they had changed at San Juan to a small prop plane—left them both feeling soiled and weary.

  “Privex is in Roseau,” Walt said primly.

  “Wrong. That’s just a P.O. box. The actual facility is just above the village of Morne Prosper.”

  “How do you even know that?”

  “Walt, my friend. This is what I do. I’m a finder. Privex is on the lee side of that mountain, because it’s not just dependent on the island’s generous fiber-optic supply. It also has a cluster of satellite dishes sucking up Internet transmissions from the sky.”

  “But how—”

  “Because deliveries must be made. These routers and servers and hubs and switches—all the bits and pieces of the whole information architecture—need to be replaced on some schedule. They don’t last forever.”

  “Got it. So when EMC delivers parts for the Connectrix, someone has to get those parts to the facility. What telecom folks call the last-mile problem.”

  “Cisco, actually. They’re using something called the Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine.”

  “But how—”

  “Did I know they’d order one? I didn’t. So I ordered one for them. Phoned the top network hardware companies, said I was calling from Dominica, gave them the P.O. box, and tried to place an order for half a million dollars’ worth of application servers and such. Got a hit at Cisco. Long story short, I found out that they’d hired a helicopter company to do the delivery to Dominica. So I called the copter company.”

  “And that’s how you got location.”

  “Long story short,” Belknap repeated.

  “Incredible.”

  “Like I said, this is what I do.”

  “So where’s this place again?”

  “Perched up high above the Roseau Valley.”

  “Hence the Jeep,” Walt said. “To drive up that mountain.”

  “We’re hiking. It’s safer. A Jeep in the village is likely to attract scrutiny. Make it harder to arrive at the facility unnoticed.”

  “I guess that means going by helicopter is out of the question. Jeepers creepers. This trip is not as advertised.”

  “No cruise, either,” Belknap snapped. “Sorry. You can apply for a refund afterward.”

  “Oh, crap. Look, I’ll be in a better mood after I’ve eaten and showered.”

  “Not on,” Belknap said. “No time to stop.”

  “You’re kidding,” Walt said, running a hand through his brown-and-gray hair. His eyes looked even more irritated than usual as he shot Belknap a look. “You’re…not kidding.”

  Twenty minutes later, Belknap hid the Jeep in a copse of soursop trees, their dense evergreen leaves effectively camouflaging the vehicle. “We hike now.” They got out onto spongy ground, and the warm humidity seemed to wash over them like bathwater.

  Belknap glanced at his watch again. Time was indeed running short: Andrea’s life was in the balance. Genesis could have her killed at any moment.

  If she hadn’t been killed already.

  Belknap’s stomach clenched; he could not allow himself even to consider the possibility. He had to hold himself together.

  Why had Genesis grabbed her? Perhaps there was something she knew, some detail that she didn’t even know was significant—but that he might. Or perhaps—possibly a more hopeful thought—it was evidence of desperation on the part of Belknap’s shadowy adversary. Yet where was she now? What had Genesis planned for her? He refused to think about the nightmarish scenarios for which Genesis was notorious. He had to force himself to remain in the present. Simply getting through the next few hours would be difficult enough.

  One foot in front of the other.

  The ground was boggy in places, slick and mucky in others, and the ascent grew only steeper the farther they traveled. A sulfurous smell seeped from volcanic fissures. Ropelike vines dangled across the paths. Hundred-foot-tall gommier trees towered overhead, their intertwined branches forming a canopy that filtered out most of the sunlight. The two hiked with their heads down. At one point, Walt yelped. Belknap whirled around to see a gigantic frog, perched on a stump with a pelt of fluorescent green moss.

  “They call that ‘mountain chicken,’” Belknap explained. “It’s a delicacy.”

  “If I ever see that in a bucket of Popeye’s, I’m suing.” They were only a third of the way up and Walt was already gasping for breath. “I still don’t see why we’re not driving up this way,” he grumbled.

  “Want to have a trumpeteer announce our arrival while you’re at it? I told you, the idea is to get there unnoticed. We drive a Jeep up the road, there’ll be a dozen electronic sentries marking our progress.”

  Ten minutes later, Sachs begged for a rest. Belknap agreed to a three-minute break, but for a reason of his own. For the past several hundred yards, he had a nagging sense that they were being followed. In all likelihood it was simply the sound of forest fauna disturbed by their presence. Yet if there were human footfalls in the distance, he would be able to hear better if they kept still for a few minutes.

  He heard nothing—yet that was not entirely reassuring. If someone were following them, a skilled pursuer would try to match footfalls with them and remain motionless while they were motionless. No, dammit, you’re imagining things.

  “Keep an eye out for snakes,” Belknap warned Sachs as they resumed their hike.

  “All I see are lizards and mayflies,” Sachs said, panting. “And not enough lizards to deal with the mayflies.”

  “A good deal for both the lizards and the mayflies, when you think about it.”

  “So it’s just people who get the short end of the stick,” the tech huffed. After a while, he said. “I’ve been thinking more about what you’ve told me about Genesis.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “Nah, I mean, just the way that nobody’s ever seen the fellow, the way he-she-it communicates only electronically. It’s like we’re dealing with an avatar.”

  “An avatar? That’s something Indian, right?”

  “Well, originally, yeah. Like, Krishnu is an avatar of Vishnu, an advanced soul who takes on a physical incarnation to teach less-advanced souls. But nowadays, people who play computer games use it to talk about their online alter egos.”

  “Their what?”

  “There are these multiuser computer games people play, and some of them are incredibly complex. All kinds of people around the world can log in to the system and play with, or against, one another. So they develop an online character that they’re in charge of. It’s kind of their virtual self.”

  “Like a screen name?”

  “Well, that’s just the start. Because these characters can be very textured, very complicated, with a whole history and reputation that affects the strategies that other players are going to use with them. You’d be surprised how sophisticated online computer games can be these days.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Belknap said, “if I ever become a quadriplegic shut-in. Otherwise, I gotta say I find the real world pretty damn challenging enough.”

  “Reality’s overrated,” Sachs said, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Maybe. But it’ll burn you if you don’t watch out for it.”

  “You trying to tell me that the Boiling Lake is on the way?”

  “Not far, actually,” Belknap said. “But it’s no joke. People have gotten severely scalded there, even died. The temperature can really soar. It’s no goddamn hot tub.”

  “And I was so looking forward to taking a cooling dip
there,” Sachs replied sourly.

  It was past midnight by the time they heard wind chimes and realized that they had reached the village. From a distance, they saw a chute of white water, a narrow, nearly three-hundred-foot-high waterfall. A breeze cooled them a little. Then they sat together on a flat mesa-like rise. Glinting in the moonlight, a cluster of large satellite dishes looked like a floral bouquet from another planet.

  “So they’ve set up a satellite-based counter-net,” Sachs said, marvelingly. “A virtual private network. That’s top-of-the-line equipment from Hughes Network Systems.”

  The building itself was a low-slung structure of cinderblock and concrete, painted a dull green that made it blend into the forest when viewed from a distance. Up close, though, it was like a gas station perched on a mountain. A paved parking area, edged with nursery-planted shrubs that looked spindly compared to the vegetation that grew wild. Power and telephone lines that snaked up the mountain converged on a utility annex that must have housed a transformer. There was clearly a backup diesel generator in the ground beneath it.

  “What kind of security, do you know?” Sachs couldn’t quite keep a tremble from his voice.

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea, from my researches,” said Belknap.

  “An electric fence?”

  “Not in a jungle like this. Too much wildlife. Everything from manicou to iguanas to feral dogs—you wouldn’t get a security barrier, you’d get a goddamn barbecue. Same reason a perimeter alarm’s no good. It would be triggered three times an hour.”

  “So there’s, what, a gunman inside?”

  “Nope. The guys who run this place believe in technology. They’re going to have a state-of-the-art motion detector, that sort of thing—which you can’t have if you’ve got some night watchman in the place. Trouble is, the night watchman might get drunk, or fall asleep, or take a bribe—all problems that don’t afflict the technological solution. That’s how they think.”

  “That’s how I’d think,” Sachs said. “I’d wire up a detect-and-delete heuristic. How do we deal with that?”

  “There’s a lot of heat in that place, a lot of sensitive equipment. Ergo, there’s got to be a powerful cooling system, too.” Belknap pointed toward some aluminum ductwork on the roof, a wide hood with a vertical grill. “The place is practically windowless. Take a look. There’s a condenser unit just outside the rear door, and a fan, so cool air is forced in.” He pointed. “That’s the other end of the ventilation system—it’s where the warm air is pushed out. Wide ductwork to minimize resistance. So we get on the roof, we unscrew the grill, and we wriggle down.”

  “And then the alarm goes off.”

  “You got it.”

  “Which, if standard security protocols are followed,” warned Sachs, “will kick the machinery into autodelete mode in about fifteen seconds. All files totally erased. A place like Privex would rather risk losing data than leak it.”

  “Which means we need to work fast. Unplug the brain before it can activate the erase procedure. That’s the key. The guys who run this place live in town. It’ll take them half an hour to get up here. It’s the machines we need to outsmart.”

  “Now what? Because I’m not up for any derring-do, okay?”

  “All you need to do is wait for me to open the back door, and then scoot right on in.”

  “And how you’re going to do that?”

  “Watch and learn,” Belknap grunted.

  Belknap removed a rope ladder from his backpack and a two-foot piece of metal tubing. He extended the tubing—it telescoped to several times its original length—and twisted it several times until two hooks protruded from it. He scanned the facility’s roofline until he found a place where a white pipe extended along the top of the building’s nearly flat roof, and he flung the hooked tube toward it. It caught with a clank; the nylon ladder now dangled from it like a long black shawl. He tested its grip with a few tugs, then scaled it rapidly.

  Now, on the roof, he knelt before the ventilation grate and, with a wide screwdriver from his kit, removed the flat heads from all four corners. Belknap laid the grate gently on the roof. A stale smell emanated from the wide aluminum duct. The flow rate was high enough to produce a very faint breeze.

  Headfirst, he clambered in, pulling himself over the bend, using his hand and legs like a lizard. A few yards into the duct, he became aware of the dead silence, the complete absence of light. All he could hear was his own breathing, eerily magnified by the metal tube. He kept moving down the pitch-black tunnel, wriggling and pulling himself forward with his hands, foot by foot, and, painfully, around a bend. The sounds of his own breathing were eerily amplified. Then he found himself upside-down, the blood pooling in his head as abruptly he slid a few yards deeper into the duct.

  Which narrowed unexpectedly. His hands reached forward, seeking purchase, but slid back on what had become a slippery, almost greasy surface. Too late, he realized that the jointed section had connected ducting of two different standards, two different widths. He breathed in, and found that the dimensions of the duct prevented his chest from expanding fully. Only shallow breaths were possible. A primal sense of claustrophobia began to creep up on him. He moved a few feet further, straight down now. He had thought he would have to strain to control his rate of descent. Instead, he found the walls of the duct pressing against his chest. He had to struggle simply to move. His cell phone, in a breast pocket of his tunic, now gouged painfully into his ribs. He worked it free, and then it slipped from his grip, falling and smashing on some hard unseen surface below him.

  Would it trigger the motion detector? Evidently not; it was too small. His own problem was that he was too big. He was effectively trapped.

  Trapped.

  Panic was the one thing he could not afford. Yet now trivial thoughts were starting to loom large in his mind—such as the sense that he could not know whether his eyes were closed or not in the pitch darkness. He reminded himself that he couldn’t be any more than twelve feet from the end. Then his mind began to race. Sachs was a civilian, had no expertise relevant to the physical world. If Belknap were stuck here, Sachs would have no idea how to get him out. He would remain here all night. And who knew what fate would befall him if he was found by whatever security goons Privex employed?

  It was his own damn fault—the operation had been foolhardy, desperation ascendant over prudence. He had improvised a plan of action without taking his usual precautions. He’d settled on a plan without a backup plan. Christ on a raft!

  His fear had triggered sweating, and the sweating, he dimly sensed, would help smooth his passage. A cheap irony. He exhaled fully, reducing the diameter of his chest, and wriggled further, like a snake or worm, propelled by small movements from all his limbs, even his fingers. He gulped for air—and once more felt the sheet metal pressing against his rib cage. If he got stuck, could he back up somehow? He felt entombed, buried alive.

  A hundred alternate entrance routes filled his head amid clouds of regret. He was wheezing now, his breath reduced to a whistling stridor, his very alveoli constricted by stress hormones. When he was a young child he had experienced episodes of asthma, and he never forgot what it was like. It was as if you had been sprinting and then were forced to breathe through a straw. There was air, but not enough, and somehow the insufficiency seemed worse than none at all. He had not felt like that for decades, but it was how he felt now.

  Goddammit!

  He wriggled another yard, slick with perspiration, blood pounding in his ears, pressure mounting in his chest. Snug as a bug in a rug. And then his stretched-out hand touched something irregular. A grate. At the other end. He pressed at it and felt it yield slightly. Just slightly, yet enough to give him heart. Now he banged at it with the heel of his hand—and he heard it fall clanging onto the floor.

  A second later, he heard a loud, piercing beeping noise.

  Oh, Jesus—the motion detector had already been triggered while he was still trapped in this infernal m
etal tube, his hips bruised further with every snaking move. The alarm noise, rhythmic, mindless, ceaseless, grew subtly louder with each beep. Soon, no doubt, the beeping would give way to a steady whine, and the security system would be activated. A million or so e-mails erased. The journey here had been in vain. Their last lead was about to be destroyed.

  He would have screamed if he had only been able to get enough air into his lungs.

  Andrea Bancroft shuddered as she remembered Jared Rinehart’s lynxlike gaze, the abrupt way he slipped from persona to persona, multiple personalities that were each under his tight control. His gifts for deception were frightening. Yet the glimpse she’d had into his true self was even more frightening. To him, Belknap was an instrument, but something more as well; he had an unwholesome fixation on the man he had so cunningly manipulated. At the same time, it was clear, he feared Genesis as much as she and Todd did.

  What was the real reason for that? Why was she here?

  Andrea Bancroft found herself pacing, a caged animal, struggling to keep hope flickering in her breast. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will—it was the mantra of a Spanish literature teacher she’d once had, an old campaigner who revered the prewar communists and Republicans. She recalled a bit of verse from the Spanish poet Rafael Garcia Adeva, whose works she had been required to translate:

  El corazón es un prisionero en el pecho,

  encerrado en una jaula de costillas.

  La mente es una prisionera en el cráneo,

  encerrada detrás de placas de hueso…

  The heart is a prisoner in the chest,

  Locked inside a cage of ribs.

  The mind is a prisoner in the skull,

  Locked behind those bony plates…

  The lines came to her, but they carried no solace. At least a real prisoner knew where his or her prison was located. She had no idea where she was. Was it indeed in upstate New York? Quite possibly. She did know that it was not an actual prison; Rinehart had called the place a “monastery,” and she suspected the reference was not merely a joke. An abandoned monastery would have plenty of cells like this one, which could easily be retrofitted to make escape a physical impossibility. Maybe not for Todd. But she wasn’t Todd. For her it was impossible.