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“Why me?” protested Jake. “My charter is to stop WMD. Not to babysit scientists and dignitaries.”

“Because you’re a ghost. You aren’t on the radar of any country—including our own.”

“I will be after this assignment.”

Dutton shrugged. “Can’t be helped. But at least while you’re on that ship, to intelligence agencies around the world, you’ll be an enigma wrapped in a black-ops mystery.”

“Aren’t there others equally off the radar who could do this?” argued Jake. “Again, I’m WMD, which has nothing to do with this alien craft.”

“We can’t be sure of that.”

Jake shook his head. “Any civilization this advanced will have had to conquer their self-destructive and aggressive nature,” he said. “If they stop by for a visit, they’re bound to be peaceful.”

“Really?” said Dutton, shaking his head in disgust. “And what makes you the expert on alien civilizations? Who the fuck knows what might motivate them.” He paused. “Look, this isn’t up for discussion. I have you cleared all the way to the Oval Office. You need to get started immediately. I’ll feed you the list of delegates the moment a country finalizes their list, and the exact layout of the ship. I want you and Major Kolke on board. And I want you to handpick five others. No weapons will be allowed, so I want your top people in hand-to-hand combat, who excel at improvisation.”

“Are you expecting trouble from the delegates?” asked Jake.

Dutton swirled his drink. “Colonel, I’m always expecting trouble,” he replied with a dark scowl. “And I’m rarely disappointed.”

31

Kira, Desh, and Griffin returned to their Denver headquarters. Jim Connelly was away, providing new identities for Rosenblatt’s family and hexad, and helping them get established in their new surroundings and life.

Kira was grateful to be able to slip into some of her own clothing for a change, and added back to her pocket the key ring she had removed before driving out to surrender herself to Jake. She spent a few minutes attending to some pressing administrative duties and checking the computer logs for both Denver and Kentucky, making sure she had a full accounting of the actions and schedules for each hexad.

With this completed, she and Desh drove to their favorite Thai restaurant for dinner. They had been in communication via computer while she was holed up in Peterson, and she had already been thoroughly chastised by her husband for taking the risk that she had. Given that it had turned out so well, she knew he wouldn’t bring this up again.

The restaurant was dark and cozy, and the food outstanding. She ordered a glass of wine and took a small but satisfying sip.

“Believe it or not,” said Desh as their Mee Krob appetizer was placed on the table, “we haven’t talked about the alien ship yet. We may be the only people on earth who haven’t.”

“Well, we
have
been busy conducting prisoner exchanges,” pointed out Kira with a smile. “Not to mention escaping from military bases.”

“That old excuse,” said Desh with a grin of his own. “If I’ve heard that once I’ve heard it a
million
times.” He took a sip of his own glass of wine. “So what
do
you make of our alien friends?” he asked, serious once more.

Kira shrugged. “I don’t know. The fact that they’ve conquered zero point energy is stunning. But I find it depressing that as advanced as they are, they’re still bound by the speed of light. Maybe there really isn’t any clever way around it.” She paused. “I saw that several hexads have been enhanced since the news broke. What do
they
make of it?”

“There’s not nearly a consensus, even among enhanced minds. There are as many theories as there are Icarus members. They haven’t come up with anything much different than the general population.”

Kira nodded, but she was obviously distracted. “Look, David,” she said, before he could continue. “I need to change the subject. I told you about my impressions of Jake and how I escaped, but I didn’t tell you everything.”

Desh considered his wife carefully. “Go on.”

“There’s a person or a group out there with access to my enhancement treatment. I’m sure of it.”

Desh’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”

“Jake admitted to me he’d been enhanced,” she replied. “And he didn’t get a gellcap from me, that’s for sure.” She quickly recounted her discussion with the colonel.

“So Eric Frey is alive after all?” said Desh when she was finished.

Kira nodded. “Yes. Under a false identity, no doubt. It’s the only possibility I can see.”

Frey had been a molecular biologist at USAMRIID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Putnam had been blackmailing him to recreate Kira’s work and produce gellcaps for her brother. Putnam had evidence that Frey was a pedophile and more, evidence Putnam insisted would be released automatically if he turned up dead, giving Frey and others he was blackmailing a stake in his continued health. True to Putnam’s word, the day after his death, evidence against Frey was sent to the authorities, which was how Desh had learned about him to begin with. He and Kira hadn’t known his name at the time, just that he was a molecular biologist at USAMRIID. So when the story broke that a talented scientist was charged with pedophilia, and then committed suicide rather than face the charges and the shame, it all fit together perfectly. Too perfectly.

“I should have made certain he was really dead,” said Desh. “You’d think I’d know better than that by now.”

“We all had the same data, and we all were convinced that this loose end had been severed. We had no reason to suspect Frey had duplicated my therapy and managed to keep it secret. He definitely had my brother fooled. If we thought for a second he had his own supply of gellcaps, we’d have suspected his suicide was staged immediately.”

Desh frowned and shook his head dejectedly. “So déjà vu all over again,” he mumbled. “Only this time, Frey is pulling the strings instead of your brother.”

“This probably explains the attack last year when we were visiting Ross. Frey must have found us, attacked, and then lost us again.”

“Probably,” agreed Desh, carrying rice and shrimp to his mouth with a pair of black
lacquered
chopsticks.

“There’s no telling how extensive his organization is by now.”

Desh swallowed. “Not,” he said. “That would be my guess. Which is one reason he decided to extend his reach by deploying Jake and his team against us. Strangely enough, when it comes to adding personnel, the good guys have the advantage over the bad guys.”

“What do you mean?”

“Backstabbing sociopaths tend not to be very trusting. Especially when dealing with other backstabbing sociopaths—which is who would be attracted to Frey’s organization. Think of how nervous we are, and we’re the good guys. In an organization built for selfish purposes rather than altruistic ones, all of the power and access to gellcaps would have to be concentrated a the very top. Alan never allowed Putnam to be enhanced. He allowed Frey to be only because he needed more gellcaps.”

“Good point,” said Kira. “And true to form, Frey double-crossed them both and ended up on top.”

Desh nodded. “But we’re better off this time than we were when Alan was pulling the strings,” he added. “At least we have a handle on who we’re up against. No matter how good he is, I should be able to track him down. I’ll get started on that right away.”

“As if you don’t have enough to do,” said Kira.

“It
has
been a busy few weeks.” He gazed at his wife with an amused expression “It seems that people are either in love with you . . . or want you dead.”

“Look . . . David,” said Kira haltingly, her expression making it clear she was about to change the subject to one she found uncomfortable. “There is something else.”

Desh’s stomach clenched, as if he were a boxer bracing for a body blow. “So the Frey thing wasn’t enough bad news for one meal?”

“David, do you remember when we escaped from Putnam’s safe house?”

“Do I remember?” said Desh in disbelief. “How could I forget? It was the first time I was ever enhanced. Not to mention our lives were on the line. And it was the first time I realized I was in love with you.”

“Do you remember you left me for a few minutes when we were upstairs? To check on the guards you’d knocked out in the basement? You told me you wanted to see if they had any ID.”

His eyes narrowed in thought, looking for all the world as though he were struggling to understand where his wife was going with this. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I remember that too.”

“So what happened when you got down into the basement?”

Desh tilted his head as if he hadn’t heard correctly. “What do you mean? I checked them all to see if they were carrying IDs or anything else that would give us a lead. Then I returned upstairs.”

“That’s all that happened?”

“Yeah, that’s all. Why? What is this about?”

Kira described the video Jake had shown her, with him as the star, which presented a very different take on the events in the safe house basement. At first, Desh listened with a look of horror and shock, but his expression soon changed to one of relief. “Kira, the footage was faked,” he said matter-of-factly. “None of that happened. It’s part of the frame.”

Kira studied her husband for several long seconds. “I thought so too,” she said. “At first.” She shook her head. “But it wasn’t. Jake convinced me of that. So I need you to tell me about this, David,” she continued, her voice failing to hide the hurt she felt. “It’s not pretty, but after all we’ve been through together, I need to know the truth.”

“Kira, this didn’t happen. I’d tell you if it did.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. “David, I love you. And enhancement brings out demons. There’s no shame that you couldn’t control them. But I need to know. And I need to be able to trust you.”

Desh shook his head helplessly. “I told you exactly what happened,” he said with a pained expression on his face. “I checked their pockets and returned upstairs.” He paused, and she realized he had never looked more frazzled or vulnerable. “Kira, you mean the world to me. You
know
that. We trust each other with our lives every day. I’d never lie to you. I’d sooner lie to
myself
,” he added earnestly.

Kira didn’t respond, but saw her husband’s eyes widen slowly and a thoughtful expression come over his face. “Which is something we should consider,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“What if I
did
lie to myself? If the video
is
real, the only explanation is that the enhanced version of me is keeping this memory from normal me. It makes a kind of brutally efficient sense, when you think about it. We had a lot on our minds at the time—to say the least. When I returned to normal, if I knew I had slaughtered helpless men, that I hadn’t been able to control my baser instincts while enhanced, it would have preyed on my mind. At a time I needed total focus the most. My alter ego must have calculated this would slow me down, and that he couldn’t let this happen.”

“You sound like you’re talking about two different people.”

Desh nodded grimly. “Aren’t I?” he said. “You’ve been there. You know the enhanced version of you holds normal you in disdain; that you’re the painfully stupid half of a split personality.”

Kira considered. He was right, of course. “This is true. But my smarter half knows she can only come out and play for very brief periods. Her welfare is tied up with my own. And I have to take a conscious action, swallowing a pill, to invoke her. So I can trust her, because she knows I have ultimate control.” She paused. “But there is no evidence from anyone that their enhanced selves have kept things from their normal selves.”

“Maybe not yet,” said Desh. “But we know it’s well within the capabilities of an enhanced mind,” he pointed out. “You purposely suppressed your memory of your longevity breakthrough.”

There was no question he had a point. But this raised even more troubling possibilities. “So what other activities have you engaged in and forgotten?” she said worriedly. “Which other of your memories might be false?”

“Obviously a question I can’t answer. But every other time I took a gellcap I was in the enhancement room. Not many degrees of freedom there, by design. Constrained in this way, you can’t really take actions that you’d
need
to forget. This would most likely be relevant only when you’re a free-range sociopath.” He raised his eyebrows. “Like you just were.”

Kira’s eyes left her husband’s as she replayed events in her mind. “My memory tells me I was careful to leave everyone alive. Not that my alter ego wouldn’t have happily killed them all if I would have let her. But when we get back home, let’s investigate this further, just to be sure. If it turns out I killed those men and gave myself false memories, we’ll have to re-evaluate everything we’re doing.”

Desh poked at the remains of his meal, too preoccupied to finish. “We know we’re playing with fire when we use your treatment,” he said. “But the idea that I can’t trust my own memory scares the shit out of me.”

“Not just you. It forces us to question everything we
think
we know.”

They both fell silent and worked on their meals, which were now on the cold side.

“Wait a minute,” said Desh suddenly, and his already somber expression became even bleaker. “This forces us to consider your second level of enhancement in a different light. Can we even trust this? What if this level isn’t the sociopathy-free nirvana we think it is? Maybe it brings on an even more severe negative change in personality than the first level. Maybe the Kira at that level knew that you would never attempt to go there again—invoke her again—unless she planted false memories that would appeal to you.”

Kira reeled as if she had been hit in the stomach.
David could be right
. Everything to which she was dedicating herself could be a sham. She suddenly felt weak.

She searched her memory once again of her brief stay at an unimaginably high plane of intelligence. She remembered the pure, overwhelming joy she had felt just after coming out of it—before her body broke down and she was rushed to the hospital. She was sure this level brought out the best in human nature and not the worst. She wasn’t just sure intellectually, but emotionally as well.