Human (31 page)

"Then that is what you will do. But please, give me a moment of privacy first."  Vakhrusheva asked again. "Wait outside the door. I can't get out any other way. This is a last request from a man who is already resigned to his fate."

Gonzales surveyed the room again and was confident that Vakhrusheva could not escape other than through the door. "Five minutes," he said as he stepped out of the room. He watched over his shoulder has Vakhrusheva pulled the privacy curtain closed.

Mere moments later he came bursting out of the room yelling, "Nurse, nurse!  She's stopped breathing please help."

The nurse barked some codes into the microphone on the counter for the nurses station and ran into the room.

"We should leave now, Mr. Gottlieb."  Vakhrusheva whispered into Gonzales' ear. The two men walked rapidly to the front of the nursing home and out the front door.

"We'll take my car," Gonzales said, making sure that Vakhrusheva could hear him releasing the safety latch on his handgun. Gonzales lead Vakhrusheva towards Cruz's little sedan.

"I am your prisoner," Vakhrusheva responded with far too much confidence for Gonzales' taste.

Cruz didn't like being a passenger in someone else's car, especially one that smelled so horribly of cigarettes. Julian drove Cruz as far as he could before the gridlocked traffic completely prevented him from moving any further. Cruz decided that it would be far faster, and far better for his lungs, if he just jogged the next few miles to the mall. He excused himself and took off on foot down Route 7, grateful for the unseasonably cool air. Julian turned on the radio hoping to find some news or information, but every radio station gave him nothing but static. His cell phone, though fully charged, showed no bars.

He decided to see what others were saying about the strange breakdown of all of the communications systems. He rolled down his window and motioned to the driver of the car next to him. "Hey, buddy,"  he yelled out his window, "what's going on here?"

The man in the next vehicle rolled down his window and said, "I don't have any idea. I've got no radio, no cell signal, nothing. I've never seen anything like this. I just hope my wife knows how to start the generator, cause her mom's on a respirator. Maybe something from Knolls or SmithCorp or something. I just don't know."

"Well, let me know if you find anything else out. I'm going to walk up a little ways and see if I can see anything." Julian said, for the first time contemplating the awful damage that an electrical and a communications shut down would cause. He began walking up the street and several other people had also gotten out of their cars to try to see what was going on.

He approached a man who was walking in the opposite direction. "Any idea what's going on?"  He asked.

"Well the word is that there's some kind of activity at the Latham Circle mall, but there's like six accidents between here and there. The whole circle is shut down. Some guy told me that it probably has something to do with that SmithCorp helicopter that's been circling around and that there's another helicopter on the ground. Apparently the cops don't know what's going on either. They said that none of their radios are even working. They said even air traffic control is down."

"Oh, man," Julian said as the implications of what Smith had done started to sink in.  "You think its terrorists?"  Julian asked, knowing full well that it wasn't.

The man shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know man, I just don't know."

Julian saw his story coming together.

Cruz was fortunate enough to be able to hitch a ride on a motorcycle that was zigzagging its way through the parked cars and arrived at the mall far faster than he expected to. He flashed his credentials at the guard posted at the entrance who let him into the parking lot. He headed directly for the helicopter. He immediately recognized the local CIA field operations commander and gave him a closed-fist-over-his-head signal to let him know he was there. When he got close to the helicopter, he could see that Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda were safe and sound and in the custody of the CIA. He did not make small talk.

"Get these two back to SmithCorp ASAP. Smith's got communications and electricity and god knows whatever else shut down for miles. He won't turn it back on until these two are back. Get them in the chopper now." Cruz ordered the commander.

"They need to be debriefed." the commander said.

"Debrief them later."  Cruz insisted.

"There's still a perp out there, and I intend to find him."  The commander said.

"Your involvement was only for search and rescue. Your mission here is complete."  Cruz stated.

The commander squinted his eyes and gave Cruz a very scathing look. Cruz did not flinch. He had no rank or authority over the commander, but he had called this job and it was his prerogative to call it off.

Cruz knew he was losing the stare-off and did not want to waste any more time. "Look," he said, "apprehending the perp is a far lower priority than maintaining the covert nature of my operation. I have no idea what the story will be to cover this, but we can't afford to make it any more difficult. You can keep the parking lot locked down as long as you have to, but those two," he pointed to Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda, "those two need to get to SmithCorp. As soon as they get there, Smith will stop the communications shutdown and with your radios and phones working, we can hand this part off to the local police. But those two need to get back."

The commander nodded. It was not a concession on his part, but an acknowledgment of the trust he placed in Cruz's judgment. The commander also knew that the odds of apprehending him was virtually nil. The commander pointed to the helicopter pilot and then made a circular motion with his hand signaling the pilot to start the engine. The commander marshaled Bayron and Hermelinda onto the helicopter and instructed the pilot to take them to the SmithCorp Building. As soon as the commander was clear of the blades, the chopper was in the air.

The commander came back to Cruz. "I hope you know what you're doing, scout," he said to Cruz. "If I'm going to back up your field decision, and you know I will, I just want to be confident I'm on the right side."

"I appreciate that commander," Cruz replied. "Did you get anything from them before I got here."

"Only that the perp had an accent."

"Russian, maybe?" Cruz asked.

"No," the commander answered. "Guyanese, if you can believe that."

"How about the truck?" Cruz pressed.

"Absolutely clean. Built from parts with different VIN numbers all over it. Stolen plates, no fingerprints, no registration. Whoever it was sure knew what he was doing."

"Well, do your due diligence I guess," Cruz said. He already knew what the commander knew. The perp was gone.

Bobby wasn't so sure he would escape the dragnet covering the mall parking lot. He felt trapped like a rat with no line of communication to Vakhrusheva. He wasn't sure whether the doctor had glimpsed his face when he turned around in the aisle of the store. He was uncertain as to how Vakhrusheva would react when he found out that he had lost the targets. Would he too end up with a bullet in his head like his former partner?  He sat in his little car and blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling watching the purple-grey whirls and wisps as they danced in the air. His reverie was broken when his car radio suddenly came to life and started playing a pop classic from his favorite station. He pulled out his phone and was overjoyed to see four bars. He immediately called Vakhrusheva.

             
When his phone rang, Vakhrusheva knew it was Bobby with either good news or bad. To Gonzales, however, it signaled the fact that Smith's tantrum had ended and that meant that Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda had been safely returned to him.

             
"Answer it."  Gonzales demanded.

             
"No. You know that I will not compromise my mission."

             
The phone continued to ring.

             
"Give it to me." Gonzales persisted.

             
Vakhrusheva began to pass the phone to Gonzales with his left hand, the one that still worked reasonably well. Just before handing it off, he crushed it in his grip, dropping the broken shards and pieces in Gonzales' lap. "Did you expect otherwise, Marco?"  He asked, intentionally seeking to convey his disrespect by using his first name.

             
Gonzales' face went flush for a moment and then lit up with a large grin. "No, Vladimir, I would have been disappointed if you hadn't."

             
The two men rode along in silence. Heading North on the 90 along the Hudson and then into the Adirondacks. Gonzales parked near a clearing. "Get out," he ordered.

             
Vakhrusheva complied in silence.

"You know I have to kill you,"  Gonzales said matter-of-factly as he drew his gun from his coat pocket.

"Would I stand a trial? Kidnaping? Espionage?  Spend the rest of my life in jail? Lie in a nursing home hooked to wires and tubes and pumped so full of drugs that I wouldn't know whether I was alive or dead?"  Vakhrusheva said.

"That is not a fate either of us would embrace."  Gonzales replied honestly.

"I have a gun, you know. It is in my right coat pocket. I could have pulled it and it would be me pointing a gun at you. I could have pulled it on you at the nursing home or in the car. I could pull it right now and you and I could enjoy a little Mexican standoff. You are Mexican aren't you?"

"I haven't claimed a country for many years," Gonzales answered. "Neither of us serve a country any more, do we?"  He used his gun to direct Vakhrusheva around the car and into the clearing.

"Do you know why I didn't draw it, Marco?  Do you know why you are not looking down the barrel of a Makarov pistol right now?"  He paused for a moment while Gonzales contemplated the question.

Gonzales was curious to know why Vakhrusheva was not doing anything to prevent his imminent assassination.

"I didn't draw it," Vakhrusheva said in answer to his own question, "because this finger does not bend." 

He held up the index finger of his right hand and pointed it as if it were a gun. "I cannot pull a trigger." He looked sadly at the twisted index finger of his right hand.

"This finger, broken many, many times, is now arthritic. It does not bend. So why do I carry a gun?" Vakhrusheva asked rhetorically. "Because you are now the only one who knows that besides me, and I intend to keep it that way.

"I am obsolete, Marco, and so are you."  He continued. "Our mission is over. You choose your curse: will you waste away like Mrs. Oronov, or preserve yourself in a box like Elijah Smith?"

"I do not distract myself with mind games and philosophy, Vladimir."  Gonzales answered.

Vakhrusheva kneeled in the snow without having been asked to do so. He raised his arms and held them out to the sides, chest high and parallel to the ground. He grimaced in pain as he did so.  "It comes with age, Marco. Perhaps I have aged faster than you."  He leaned back and stuck his chest out.

Gonzales raised his weapon and aimed. The single bullet ripped directly through Vakhrusheva's heart and he fell over dead in the snow.

Gonzales walked back to Cruz's car and lifted Alice's blanketed body out of the trunk. He tossed it haphazardly next to Vakhrusheva's still bleeding corpse. He got into the car and slowly drove himself back to the SmithCorp Building.

Vakhrusheva was wrong, he thought to himself. Only his mission is over, mine has merely changed.

One day, he thought, there will not just be one Smith in one computer or two. There will be hundreds, maybe millions of people living in millions of computers, each backed up a million times, and maybe even backed up on a satellite orbiting the earth. What good is a nuclear weapon against people who can live everywhere all at once?

             
Smith had already proved his power, Gonzales mused, and it was too much power for one man to have. Far too dangerous for dangerous men to have. This was a new kind of threat. The kind that couldn't be solved with a bullet. One that couldn't be solved by reading faces and hiding in shadows. The threat of the future was, perhaps, not even in the hands of men.

             
"Shit." He said aloud, having reached the same conclusion that had led Vakhrusheva to commit his passive suicide. I am obsolete.

He quickly cleared his mind of these thoughts. Philosophy is for men of leisure, he told himself as he steered onto the freeway and back to SmithCorp.

             
In Cohoes, Kitty already had a very stressful morning. With the power outages and the dead phones, she just wasn't sure what to do. In her little KO Data System's office, she had watched the meter on the battery backup/uninterruptible power supply steadily wind down and she knew that if it reached zero there would be a major problem. There was no one she could call since there were no phones working. She felt trapped and helpless. She looked, in vain, through the manuals the lead technician had left, but they just confirmed for her the fact that there was nothing she could do. When the lights finally came back on, she was nearly in tears. As soon as her own computer booted back up and restored itself she saw that she had received a message from Mr. Smith. She immediately sent him a message back and soon thereafter, his voice came over her speakers.