Class Fives: Origins (35 page)

He stepped around the other vehicle and approached the driver’s door. The smoky window slid down to reveal the muscular blond man inside, his eyes hidden behind the dark glasses already turned to him.

The bald man extended the envelope, and the blond reached lazily through the open window to take it.

“This everything?” he said quietly.

The bald man nodded.

“And the money?”

“It will be wired to your account as already discussed. You should have the first payment already.”

The blond man looked down at the envelope, then reached to open it.

“I would prefer you didn’t do that now,” the bald man said, a bit sharply.

But the blond ignored him, shooting a finger under the flap and letting it tear along the edge of the closure. Inside bulged with folded papers, some passports and some other bits and pieces. The blond glanced into it, turned slowly back to the bald man and gave a slow, tight smile.

“Sorry,” he said, “just had to be sure.”

He turned to gently set the envelope on the passenger’s seat, then turned back.

“So, I take it we won’t be seeing each other again.”

“That’s right,” the bald man responded.

The blond nodded slowly.

“In that case, it’s been nice doing business with you.”

“And you, Lieutenant,” the bald man replied.

“Say Hello to the good doctor for me,” the blond said as the window began to roll up.

Just before it slid closed, he flashed a wide smile.

The bald man stepped back as the car began to roll forward and he watched it reach the end of the lane, pause, then turn and disappear behind the thicket of parked vehicles.

He didn’t much like this particular individual, but it wasn’t his place to make such judgments. As long as the Lieutenant was capable of carrying out his assigned task, that was enough. But he didn’t trust anyone who was pretentious enough to demand a title he clearly didn’t deserve. The man in fact had never been an officer, merely another of the borderline personalities who sometimes found their way into the vast ranks of the military and eventually discovered their egos weren’t compatible with the discipline and self-sacrifice required by such an organizational structure. In fact, the man had hardly managed promotion to Sergeant before being separated from the United States Marine Corp. But his service record did demonstrate a willingness to take on operations that were, at best, tactically questionable by normal U.S. military standards. Now that he was well embarked on his career as a mercenary, he had begun to develop a bit of a reputation within that shadowy world as reliable, if somewhat reckless. But that didn’t matter in this case. So long as he was able to retrieve the component and deliver it to the site, that would be enough. And that would happen within the next few days. The final piece would be done, the long months of grinding effort concluded.

So it was done, the bald man thought. The last piece had been launched. Whoever composed the team assembled by this man, they would be on their way to visit Dr. Svag shortly. And having paid their respects, would collect the prize and head on to the site.

Once there, the site security force would eliminate them, and that particular window would be closed.

And for himself, there would be no more travel. No more missions. Now his time would be devoted to providing whatever was asked by his employer, and keeping himself occupied until it was time. And that was fine with him. It was right. It was just.

But for now he had a bit of leisure. His employer didn’t expect him back immediately. And he admitted to himself he did have an urge to savor a few more things, one last time.

There was one particular woman whom he had always wanted to explore a bit more deeply than mere conversation. And why not? For the next day or so he would simply absorb what he could of life, before he returned to the bunker for the endgame.

Call her, he told himself. Tell her to come over. She would welcome such an invitation. As would he.

A slow, satisfied smile spread out over his lips, but then he realized his own untraceable cell phone was sitting in its charger in the bedroom of the small house he rented in the tiny municipality of Providence, as a fallback cover should he ever find himself coming under the scrutiny of anyone who might appear too interested in his activities and lifestyle. It was the place he would go to keep all prying eyes well away from the bunker, which lay well in the middle of nowhere.

He hesitated, telling himself to simply wait until he arrived back at the house to make the call, but he was feeling a warm, pleasant rush of something insistent, something that was beginning to demand his immediate attention.

And he did have that old cell phone sitting in the glove compartment of his car. He could call her now, catch her before she was scheduled to begin work, and arrange something for later, once she finished her shift. And besides, he considered, what could it hurt? It was only a single phone call. No one would ever know. His employer was such a brilliant man, perhaps the only human being who understood the terrible truth about things, that no one would have the slightest clue who he was or be searching for him.

He climbed back into his car, opened the glove compartment and extracted the abandoned cell phone, which, he knew, should have been destroyed months ago, and dialed the number from memory, listening to it ring several times before it was picked up.

“Hello?” she said, and his smile widened.

“Hello,” he replied. “It’s me.”

12

Assault

The analyst finished scribbling the notes and bolted from his chair, turning to hurry up between the tiers of desks and toward the door of the glassed-in office at the top of the theatre-like arrangement of the room.

Reaching the top step, he knocked on the glass.

Crawford looked up from the computer screen and waved a vague arm, summoning the young man to enter.

Pushing open the glass seal, the analyst stepped inside and moved rapidly toward the desk, already speaking.

“Sir,” he said, excitedly, “We have a hit on a phone number.”

Crawford’s shoulders seemed to jolt up suddenly, and he straightened in his chair.

“Go on,” he responded, tensely.

“There were several phone numbers in the registration papers for the Foundation, but as far as we could tell all of them had been disconnected and the ID information was bogus. But the system just caught a call from one of them. It lasted one minute and eleven seconds.”

“Where from?” Crawford snapped sharply.

The analyst looked up from his notes, his expression a mask of tension.

“Montana. Small town in the middle of nowhere called Providence.”

Crawford shot out a hand toward the phone, lifting the receiver and punching in a long string of numbers even as he spoke.

“Bring me all the data, right now. And I want a transcript of the call a.s.a.p.”

“Yes sir,” the analyst said, turned and hustled to the door, out, and down back toward his desk.

Crawford turned his full attention to the sound of the ringing of the phone in his ear. An instant later, the connection was made.

“White,” the voice said.

“Crawford,” he responded. “We have a possible hit on the courier. I’m setting up a chopper for you at LAX. Get over there as soon as you can. I’ll have the details for you shortly.”

“Understood,” White replied crisply. “Operational parameters?”

“Observation and tracking only, for now. We need to see if he will lead us to Montgomery. But be prepared to go for capture. We don’t have much time on this one. I’ll let you know if the parameters change, understood?”

“Understood. Resources?”

Crawford only hesitated a moment.

“Anything you need. But keep it black. No outsiders.”

“Copy,” White said and hung up.

Crawford replaced the receiver and leaned back in his chair, raising an arm to rub absently at his chin as he considered this new data.

If it was the courier, he reasoned, they might have an opportunity to tail him to wherever Montgomery was holed up. But he didn’t know the timing of Montgomery’s plan, or how close it was to final execution.

He moved his arm and glanced at his watch.

Jones would soon be making the proposal on which the Russian segment of the operation depended. He would know shortly whether or not he would have to try and fight the endless, thick and complex bureaucracy that would explode the security of his agency, exposing it to the world. Because there was no time for subtlety. If his initial plan collapsed, the next call he made would have to be to the President of the United States, who in turn would contact the Russian leader, and then everything would have to come out. The whole fragile, covert structure atop which he sat would suddenly have to be exposed, simply to be able to accomplish what it had been created to perform. And after that it would be ruined.

He felt a pang of frustration. If only he’d had more time, he fumed. He would have been able to build not only the new facility, but begin establishing the delicate but necessary web of contacts and resources that would be required to slip, unseen, throughout the world and do what needed to be done to protect it. People would then be able to go about their ordinary, calm and orderly lives, blissfully unaware of what was being done to protect that calm and peaceful environment for them.

He glanced up, out through the glass walls of the office, at the billions of dollars worth of equipment in the room beyond. The most powerful center of pure information the world had ever known, and it might soon be revealed to the cold, harsh light of day. And God alone knew what would happen then.

He shook off the thought and turned his attention back to the computer screen, where the various small windows continued to track the ongoing operations in Arizona and the one currently in transit to the Czech Republic.

The Arizona team had turned up a single document at Franklin’s workshop. An aging schematic containing an exploded view of some sort of mechanism that had been rolled up and hidden behind a disregarded bookshelf. It had already been scanned and beamed back to the room down the hall from where he sat, where experts were now pouring over it, translating the Russian notations that covered its surface, and attempting to determine its function and purpose. So far the assessment was that it was intended to be some sort of particle generator, but just what kind they had not yet determined.

The team in transit was only an hour from touching down and beginning their approach to the facilities, just outside of Prague, where Dr. Svag was located. By the end of the day they would either have succeeded in taking possession of whatever Svag was making, or the entire situation would have dropped straight into a pit of something too horrible to contemplate, a literal breaking loose of Hell itself.

This has got to be fixed, he told himself. If we manage to get through this in one piece, it can never again be allowed to come so close to exposure or failure. No matter what had to be done to protect and hide it. It was too important. It was, quite literally, the world’s last line of defense from its own stupidity and insanity.

But that was for another time, he chided himself. Right now all he could do would be to take each new step as it presented itself. And pray. Pray long and loud.

Roger and John sat in the waiting room, preparing their thoughts for yet another day of dull, grueling tests. Most of the medical procedures had been completed with predictable results.

John had been poked, prodded, had samples of various kinds withdrawn from his body and various uncomfortable things put in, usually through a needle in his arm.

Roger’s body continued to resist all attempts to look inside his skin, despite whatever diagnostic tools they tried. After giving up in frustration, the best they could manage was to ask him to pluck a few of his own hairs, which were examined under an electron microscope. But they simply looked like hairs, nothing more or less.

This was now the second day of having their individual, unique capacities tested, and while the various doctors and a few unnamed visiting specialists were startled at what they witnessed, they still could not develop any reasonable, concrete explanation for how such things were even possible.

John had made half a dozen jumps the day before, finally refusing to continue. His head swam and his stomach was roiling by the time he staggered out to his car and drove himself home. Even the large, mysterious machine Dr. Henry had brought in and aimed at him while he jumped from one side of the large examination room to the other, had revealed nothing. The instant he vanished from in front of the long tube that had been sampling something having to do with subatomic radiation, and popped into existence on the other side of the room, shaving away less than a minute of reality, the data simply stopped. Henry had been hoping to catch a trace of whatever the mysterious mechanism was that allowed this inexplicable activity, perhaps a single track of a new, as-yet-undiscovered particle, flying away into space at the moment of the event, but instead the data just died away as if chopped off by a sharp knife.

Roger had been amused at first, taking the pressure gauge they handed him, that could record up to several hundred tons of force, and effortlessly squashing it to a lump of useless metal and wiring with a mere flex of his hand. He’d allowed them to try to break his skin with everything from a scalpel to a high intensity laser. Nothing made the slightest bit of difference.

By the end of the first afternoon he was growing bored and irritated, as if indulging the annoying attentions of a group of unruly children intent on playing with a new toy.

Today he had decided that this would be it. He would give them only one more day of poking and prodding him. If they couldn’t comprehend by now that nothing they attempted would have the least effect, it was no longer his concern. He would not return tomorrow, and had already discussed it with John, who agreed wholeheartedly, but couldn’t figure out how to extract himself from the looming threat of being treated as a terrorist.