AWOL 2 Page 14

  Nice, she thought. That’s next Christmas’s presents sorted.

  OK. She turned back to the computer and cleared her mind. Let’s look at this from a different angle. What did those thirty-five people die of in the past year?

  The answer was: heart disease. All of them. Every single one.

  That wasn’t just odd; that was positively unusual. It looked as if this mission that she and Bradley had been given actually had a point to it. There was something suspicious going on.

  Bex considered emailing herself all the reports, but that would be a lot of data to go through – most of it irrelevant. None of the thirty-five deaths were listed as suspicious, which meant that the toxicology reports would be long, detailed and essentially useless to her. There was nothing to find.

  Instead, on a hunch, she checked the place where each death had occurred.

  They’d all occurred in the Goldfinch Institute itself. Every single employee who had died that year had actually died on company premises. None at home, none in a restaurant, or a gym, or a sports field. None while out jogging. Every single one of those people had died in that complex of blue glass buildings.

  Surely that should have raised some suspicions? Someone should have investigated. But apparently nobody had.

  She pulled all the data from the searches she’d made into one document and emailed that through to a secure and covert email address that she and Bradley used to share things when she was on missions and he was providing support. If she knew Bradley, he’d be monitoring it, but just in case she also sent a quick email to his regular account asking him to take a look and see if he could spot anything. It was mid-evening in England. Assuming he wasn’t out on a date with Sam’s sister, he might come up with something she’d missed.

  Bex packed up, paid her bill at the reception desk and left. She had a feeling there was no more data there to find: if she wanted more, she’d have to look somewhere else.

  When she checked the image from the ARCC kit, Kieron now appeared to be sitting in a small conference room watching some kind of company presentation. He’d got a milkshake from somewhere; she could see it in his hand. Every now and then it suddenly loomed up, obscuring most of the view from his glasses as he took a sip. Probably not wheatgrass, based on the fact that he seemed to be enjoying it, and it wasn’t luminous green.

  The video Kieron was watching momentarily caught Bex’s attention. It showed what must have been some high-tech Goldfinch Institute piece of research: a man standing on a cliff-edge, probably somewhere out in the desert outside Albuquerque. He wore a flight suit and helmet, and he’d been strapped into a pair of wings shaped like a boomerang that extended out from his back, as wide as he was tall. Right in the middle of the wings she saw a jet engine with two protruding nozzles. As she watched, the man ran towards the edge of the cliff. He jumped, and the jet-engine came to life. Instead of falling, he flew!

  ‘Project ICARUS,’ a voice said on the soundtrack of the video. ‘A developmental system allowing military personnel the freedom of powered flight on the battlefield.’

  As Bex watched, the video showed the pilot looping the loop and conducting various aerobatic manoeuvres.

  ‘And,’ the voice continued, ‘the ICARUS system is armed with eight small, high-velocity rockets, stored in the wings, for offensive and defensive use.’

  The pilot adjusted his course so that he was flying parallel to the ground. Far ahead of him, Bex could see a large circular bullseye target, sitting surreally in the desert. Abruptly, several lines of fire leaped ahead of the pilot, linking his wings to the target. The bullseye exploded in flame as the pilot adjusted his course to avoid the blast, soaring triumphantly like some kind of superhero while the target blazed.

  Impressive, she thought, as she pushed the images away into a corner of the glasses. The Goldfinch Institute seemed to have a lot of things going on in its research department. Kieron would be loving this.

  Bex supposed that she ought to be heading back to collect him, but she could do with some food. Their hotel wasn’t far away, and she’d noticed a coffee franchise in the lobby where she could get a latte and a croissant. She could also pick up a power bank from her room: the ARCC equipment didn’t draw much power, but if she was going to have to sit outside the Goldfinch Institute waiting for Kieron to come out, then she might as well charge up her own glasses, just to make sure they didn’t suddenly flake out on her. The great thing was, they didn’t need a USB cable or anything – both sets of glasses and the earpiece charged electromagnetically when the power bank was near them. And, if she went to the hotel, she could check on Sam. Reaching her car, she quickly plotted a route through the centre of Albuquerque to the Marriott.

  As she walked across the car park towards the hotel building she noticed several black cars parked there. Most of them were the wrong make, the wrong model or the wrong year to be the one that had been following her, but one car made her hesitate. It looked like the same car, but she wasn’t sure. She glanced at the licence plate, but that wasn’t much help: the car behind her had never come close enough for her to see its plates.

  She shook her head in annoyance. There was no point getting paranoid. There had to be hundreds, maybe thousands, of cars meeting the same description. She couldn’t let herself get spooked by every single one.

  She went in through a side door, but not the one she’d used the night before. She hated falling into routines. Routines were what got agents killed.

  When she reached her room she slid her key card into the lock. The green light came on, and she pushed the door open.

  A woman stood in the centre of her room, and it wasn’t the maid.

  It was a redhead, wearing black trousers, black boots and a black jacket over a white blouse.

  The woman looked surprised, but when she realised that Bex wasn’t from housekeeping, her expression changed. The fake innocence dropped from her face, replaced by an icy detachment. She reached behind her back.

  Assuming she was about to face a weapon, Bex sprang into instinctive attack mode. She flicked the key card at the woman, sending it spinning through the air. The woman tried to jerk her head away but the card caught her beneath her eye, drawing blood.

  Bex had a split second to decide whether to run or fight. It didn’t even take her that long: fight.

  A folding metal and canvas stand was by the door, ready for a guest to put their suitcase on it. Bex bent down, scooped the stand up and stepped forward, swinging it in an arc towards the woman’s head. The woman fell backwards onto Bex’s bed, but she used the bounce of the springs to propel herself back to her feet and towards Bex. Her fist swung up, hitting Bex beneath her jaw. Bex’s head snapped back with a click she felt all the way through her skull. For a moment everything went red. She dimly felt the glasses falling away from her face and the stand falling from her hand.

  In desperation, Bex clenched her hands together and punched outwards. She still couldn’t see anything, but her fists met their target and Bex heard the woman hit the wall and slide down.

  Her vision clearing, Bex looked around for a better weapon. Nothing: she’d packed her clothes neatly away in the wardrobe and her toiletries in the bathroom. Short of pulling the alarm clock / iPod dock from the bedside table and wrenching the power cable from the wall, she couldn’t see anything of use.

  The redhead – little more than a blur at the moment – had fallen into the space between the bed and the wall, but she seemed to be levering herself up. Bex kicked out, knocking the bed sideways. With her support taken away the woman fell back again. Bex yanked the duvet off the bed and threw it over her, just to slow her down for a critical few seconds. Before she could get up, Bex ran for the bathroom. Not to lock herself in though – all American hotel bathrooms could be opened easily from the outside, if you knew how. It meant that if a guest passed out or, God forbid, died in the shower, then staff could get in. But that meant redheaded attackers could get in as well. No, Bex wasn’t going to shel
ter there. She was looking for a weapon.

  She heard a scrabbling behind her, and muffled cursing. She slammed the bathroom door behind her and turned the lock. It wouldn’t stop her pursuer for long, but it would give Bex a few more precious seconds.

  She scanned the toiletries she’d meticulously arranged on the fake marble surface, frantically looking for something she could use. Nail scissors? Too small. Toothbrush? Too blunt. Antiperspirant?

  Antiperspirant!

  As the door burst open, slamming back against the bath, Bex scooped the canister up. Her fingers fumbled with it, almost dropping it in the sink, but she turned around with it in her hand just as the redhead bought her hand up to point at Bex’s face.

  Not a hand. A gun. A gun, pointed at Bex’s face.

  Bex pressed the nozzle on top of the can.

  A fine mist of aerosol droplets lightly scented with jasmine sprayed into her attacker’s eyes. She screamed, bringing her hands up to her face and dropping the gun. Bex bent to pick it up, and by the time she straightened up the woman was staggering back into the bedroom, wiping her arm across her eyes. She glared at Bex from bloodshot eyes, then turned and half ran, half fell out into the hallway. Bex’s heart was racing. As she tried to get her breathing under control, she heard the woman stumbling against the walls as she tried to run unsteadily away. Seconds later a bang! echoed through the building as the fire-escape door was thrust open.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Bex muttered to herself, gazing around at the room that had, just moments before, been immaculate.

  ‘Room party?’ a shocked voice asked. She turned around. Sam stood in the doorway. His face was white.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bex said. ‘If it had been, I would have invited you. Come in – I don’t want anyone else seeing in.’ As he entered the room, she gave him a quick, impulsive hug. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean for you to see this. Are you OK?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. I don’t think she even saw me as she pushed past. I don’t know what you did to her, but her eyes looked terrible.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bex said, ‘but on the plus side, they won’t be sweating for a while and they’re nicely fragranced.’ She took a breath. ‘Sit down. Let’s catch up.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been asleep all day,’ Sam said, throwing himself into the small armchair over by the window. ‘What’s your story?’

  Quickly she brought him up to date with the trip she and Kieron had made to the Goldfinch Institute, her journey back and the events in the hotel room. ‘I’m guessing that someone at the Institute gave orders to follow the car and see where I went. Either the driver or someone else was instructed to search our hotel rooms for anything incriminating.’

  ‘Our hotel rooms?’ Sam squealed.

  Bex nodded. ‘Both rooms were booked at the same time, and we all arrived together. Normally I try not to leave a trail when I stay in hotels, but we’re undercover – at least Kieron is. We had to leave a trail. People need to think that we’re real.’

  ‘You mean this could have happened to me?’ He gazed around in shock at the damage.

  She shook her head. ‘No – she would have knocked on your door and said she was there to make the bed up or something. If you’d answered, she’d have apologised and gone away. If you didn’t answer, she would have picked the lock and searched the room without leaving any trace.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Either my room was first, or yours has already been searched. Actually she would probably have started with yours – Kieron’s fronting up this operation.’ A thought struck her. Kieron! She scooped the ARCC glasses up from the floor where they’d fallen and put them on. The earpiece was still in her ear canal, but her brain had been filtering out the noises from it.

  Through the ARCC link she could see a conference table and, to her relief, Kieron’s hands. Todd Zanderbergen was on the other side of the table. He was holding the rubberised electrode net, turning it over and examining it with interest. Tara Gallagher sat off to one side.

  Bex would have liked to tell Kieron about the fight, and being followed, and pull him out while they considered their options, but Todd was talking.

  ‘This is really great,’ Zanderbergen said approvingly. ‘Small, flexible and really well designed.’ He scrunched it up. ‘I guess your idea is that this is projected from some kind of launcher, like those beanbags you saw earlier, unfurls in flight and wraps itself around the target’s head. Intriguing.’ He fixed Kieron with his pleasant and yet razor-sharp gaze. ‘So, how do you guarantee that the net will unfurl properly and fit around their head rather than, oh, say, smacking them in the face? It seems a rather clumsy manoeuvre.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good question …’ Kieron said. Bex could hear a slight tension in his voice. He sounded as if he’d been talking for a while and was running out of things to say.

  ‘Sorry – I’m back,’ Bex said. ‘Tell him it’s defined by distance.’

  ‘Distance,’ Kieron said with a notably relieved tone in his voice. ‘It’s defined by distance.’

  ‘The launcher will have a laser rangefinder,’ Bex went on. ‘The net of electrodes will –’

  ‘The launcher will have a laser rangefinder,’ Kieron interrupted. ‘The net of electrodes will be held together by an electrostatic charge.’ Before Bex could speak, he kept going. ‘At the right moment after it’s fired, the launcher will communicate with the net using near-field wireless technology, like Bluetooth. The charge will flip, the net will be pushed apart and it’ll wrap around the target’s head.’

  Todd nodded. ‘Very clever. You’ve thought all this through. Can you demonstrate it?’

  ‘That’s why you need him,’ Bex said.

  ‘That’s why I need you,’ Kieron translated. ‘I have the principle of the thing worked out from beginning to end, and I can demonstrate the way the reflected brainwaves will calm the real brainwaves. Putting it into practice – making a technology demonstrator – requires funding and support.’

  ‘I need to get you out of there,’ Bex said, then quickly added, ‘Don’t say this to him. But we need to extract you.’

  ‘OK – let’s talk turkey,’ Todd said, leaning forward slightly. ‘My legal people have read through your non-disclosure agreement, and we can live with it. Let’s discuss terms.’

  ‘Actually,’ Kieron said ‘let’s not. I’m jet-lagged, and that means I’m not at my best for making deals. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to take advantage of an exhausted kid. Can we meet tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll clear my schedule,’ Todd said. ‘What about your car? Do you have to call it?’

  ‘Interesting,’ Bex mused. ‘He knows I drove away. What else does he know?’

  ‘I’ll do it in a moment,’ Kieron said.

  ‘We need to go,’ Bex said to Sam. ‘Now.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Damn,’ Bex said angrily; ‘this is pointless.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Kieron asked. ‘We know Todd Zanderbergen’s people put the USB stick into their computers. Didn’t the Trojan transfer across, or was it detected by his anti-virus programs and eradicated?’ He was sitting on her bed, watching her work the ARCC kit. Had he really looked that bizarre when he’d been operating it, he wondered?

  He glanced at Sam, who had curled himself into the armchair. Bex sat at the desk. ‘Do I really look that lame when I use the kit?’ he murmured.

  Sam nodded. ‘Worse.’

  ‘We’d assumed,’ Bex said grimly, ‘falsely, as it turns out, that the Goldfinch Institute were using a Windows-based operating system on the inside of the company as well as on the outside, in the admin areas. That’s not the case.’

  Kieron tried to remember what the PA, Judith, had said when he’d commented on the advanced design of the Goldfinch Institute’s computers. We make them ourselves. Nobody else can buy them. They’re about five years ahead of anything that’s available to the general public.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I think Todd’s designed his own operating syst
em. Not Windows, not iOS, not Linux and not Android.’

  ‘Oh, “Todd” is it?’ Sam muttered. ‘Best friends now.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Bex asked, gesturing to Sam to shut up.

  Kieron considered for a moment, getting his thoughts in order. ‘If our Trojan was like, say, a normal biological virus, then it would have been expecting a normal human bloodstream as its environment. Put it into a banana milkshake and it wouldn’t be able to function. That’s what Todd’s operating system is: something completely alien to the Trojan.’

  Sam licked his lips. ‘I could demolish a banana milkshake right now.’

  Kieron sighed. He’d been afraid of this, ever since seeing those computers. ‘Then there’s only one option, isn’t there?’

  Bex winced. ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

  Sam looked from Kieron to Bex and back again. ‘What? What am I missing?’

  Kieron felt his spirits fall. It was like that feeling of inevitable doom he always got at the dentist’s surgery – the knowledge that what was going to happen next was going to hurt, and there was no way of avoiding it. He was on a road with only one destination. ‘I’m going to have to sneak back into the Institute, log on to one of the computers and get the information we’re looking for the old-fashioned way – by hand.’

  Sam looked puzzled. ‘OK – working backwards – how are you going to get past whatever security your mate Todd has on his wonderful bespoke custom-built computer system? That seems to me to be a bit of a showstopper.’

  Kieron thought back momentarily to his time in Todd Zanderbergen’s office, gazing out at the people who worked for him, and his time touring the site. ‘Todd’s got what he thinks are a perfect pair of security measures,’ he said, pulling his thoughts together as he spoke. ‘The first one is that he has two layers of computers that aren’t connected to each other – the administrative ones, which only communicate with the outside world, and the work ones, which are networked within the Institute but have no contact outside. That means a hacker or virus can get into the first layer, but no further. The second level of security is that the computers on the inside are all built by the Goldfinch Institute and run a unique operating system of his own design. Even if a hacker or virus does get in, it wouldn’t be able to function.’