Killing Time (3 page)

My first stop on the road to what
I was determined would be an explanation had been the offices of several
acquaintances at the FBI's national headquarters in D.C. What I heard there,
along with the manner in which my contacts delivered it, was unnerving: couched
in ostensibly friendly terms was a firm warning to back off of any investigation
having to do with the deaths of John Price and Max Jenkins. Apparently both
the attorney general and the head of the Bureau didn't much like me to start
with, given that I'd had the temerity, in my book, to put some of the leading
figures of American history under the psychological microscope and make a
modest pile of money in the process. But there was more than just personal animosity
conveyed during the meetings, and by the time they were over, I was feeling
disoriented and isolated. In my line of business you come to expect idle
threats from local police forces, which have always viewed profilers with deep
suspicion; but to have the rug pulled out from under you by the feds—well,
that's a lonely feeling.

Nonetheless, I pressed on to
Florida to attempt an interview with Dr. Eli Kuperman, anthropologist and
convict. He was incarcerated in the Belle Isle State Correctional Facility
outside Orlando, which was yet another of the country's new corporately
operated prisons. The structure had originally been intended as a high school;
but given the remarkable levels of violence that had come to characterize teen
behavior in the increasingly ghettoized suburbs of nearly every American city,
the design of high schools was not all that different from that of prisons.
Thus when Florida fell into line with the rest of the country by giving the
people's mania for punishment precedence over education, converting the sheer
stone and nearly windowless mass at Belle Isle into a penitentiary hadn't been
much of a trick.

I arrived at midday, made my
request, and found, much to my surprise, that Dr. Kuperman was not only willing
but anxious to see me. He insisted, however, that he would do so only during
evening visiting hours on the following day. By the time I took my seat at a
clear, bulletproof panel on the second floor of Belle Isle's visitors' building
at seven the next evening, it was nearly dark. A guard soon appeared through a
door in the room on the other side of the transparent divider, followed by a
man of moderate height and similar weight who had dark features and curly brown
hair and wore delicate tortoiseshell glasses: Eli Kuperman. He recognized me as
quickly as I did him and proceeded to sit eagerly opposite me. The guard
switched on an intercom that allowed us to talk.

"Dr. Wolfe," Kuperman
said with a smile. "It's an honor. I've read your book—fascinating,
really." The fact of imprisonment seemed to be having no effect on him at
all.

"Dr. Kuperman," I said,
acknowledging his compliment with a nod. "I've read a great deal about
your work, too—though I'll admit I can't quite figure how it's landed you in
this
place."

"Can't you?" Kuperman
asked, again very pleasantly. "Well, you'll find out soon enough. Oh, that
reminds me—" He unbuttoned the cuff of his sky blue shirt, revealing a
small, flexible keypad adhered to his skin. Touching a few of the keys, he then
rebuttoned his cuff with another smile and looked back up. "There. We have
a few minutes yet. How would you like to pass them?"

I assumed that the "few minutes"
he was referring to was the balance of the time I'd been allowed with him, and
so I put my query bluntly: "Suppose you tell me what your brother had to
do with John Price's death."

Kuperman waved me off cordially.
"Oh, plenty of time for that later. And Malcolm will be able to explain it
much more thoroughly than I can."

"Malcolm?"

"Don't worry, you'll
understand. I'm sorry about Mr. Jenkins, by the way. We'd hoped he'd come
along, too."

"Come along?" I said,
now completely at a loss.

"Yes." He moved closer
to the glass. "I know you're confused, but try to keep up some kind of a
conversation, will you? Otherwise the guard—"

Kuperman suddenly stopped talking
when we began to hear an extraordinary noise: a deep, rumbling hum that seemed
to come from all directions at once, even from inside my own head. It grew in
volume and intensity at a quick but steady rate, until the metal chairs and
tables in the room began to vibrate noticeably.

Looking up at the ceiling,
Kuperman checked his watch again. "Well," he said, strangely
unconcerned.
"That
was quick. They must have been closer than I
thought..."

As the hum grew louder, I dashed
to the only window in the visiting room and looked out into the darkness. There
was precious little to be seen save the lights atop the prison walls, and then
something appeared to blot even those beacons out. Moving above and across the
walls was a dark mass, perhaps as long as a pair of train cars and twice as
high.

"What the hell?" was
all I could whisper; and then I noted Kuperman's shouting voice coming over the
intercom and just cutting through the ever-intensifying hum:

"Dr. Wolfe! Dr. Wolfe, move
away from the window,
please!"

I did as he said, and just in
time, too; for the bars outside the window, loosened by the mounting
vibration, suddenly broke free of their anchors and flew away, while the wired
glass panes did not so much shatter as explode. I ran back to the partition and
saw that Kuperman's guard, clutching his ears, was screaming in terror.

"What is it?" I shouted
through the intercom. "Kuperman, what's happening?"

Kuperman smiled; but before he
could give any explanation the wall behind him began to shake violently. In
just a few seconds it collapsed, the stone falling away and revealing a
ten-foot-square passage into the night air. Once the dust had cleared, I could
see, outside this gaping hole, what appeared to be a metallic wall about three
feet from the violated stone edifice of the visitors' building; and over the
insistent humming I began to make out the sound of gunshots coming from the
prison yard below.

"It's all right, Dr.
Wolfe!" I became conscious of Kuperman saying through the amplified
intercom. "Don't worry! But try to get under one of those tables, will
you?"

Once again my prompt observance
of Kuperman's order saved me from being severely injured, this time by flying
fragments of the transparent partition that had divided us. When I emerged from
under the table and returned to Kuperman, I found him waving an arm and urging
me to climb over the remains of the partition and join him. I did so, only to
find myself faced by Kuperman's guard as well as a second officer. Both had
their guns drawn, prompting Kuperman to turn to his man and cry out earnestly:

"Mr. Sweeney! Please! You
don't really think that's going to do any good, do you? If you and Mr. Farkas
leave now, I promise no harm will—"

Before Kuperman could finish we
were presented with yet another extraordinary sight: the sudden delineation,
by a series of small green lights, of a doorway in the metal surface outside
the hole in the building's wall. Then, with a decompressing hiss, the door
opened rapidly; in fact, it seemed to my eyes to almost disappear. Beyond the
vanished portal was a dimly lit corridor in which stood a group of figures:
four male, one quite distinctly female. The men wore coveralls; the woman was
sheathed in a gray bodysuit that clung to her with what I might, under other
circumstances, have called enticing tenacity.

With marvelous agility the young
woman leapt through the three feet of open air and into the prison, the light
of the room making two extraordinary things immediately apparent: first, the
straight, chin-length hair that framed her delicate features was a strange
silver color; and second, she held in her hands a device—presumably a
weapon—that was obviously more complex and sophisticated than any handgun I'd
ever seen.

The woman trained the device
first on one officer and then on the other. Kuperman's man, Sweeney, had the
good sense to drop his gun and head for the still intact doorway out of the
room. But the second guard, Farkas, was foolish enough to let off a round from
his pistol, even though his apparent fear made an accurate shot impossible.
The bullet struck the wall above the woman, and she ducked for an instant; then
she fixed her dark eyes on the guard with what seemed as much amusement as
anger. Leveling the device in her hands at the man, she appeared on the verge
of firing; but then she suddenly turned and trained the weapon on a desk that
sat near the room's exit. She pulled what looked like a trigger, and then,
without much of a sound, the desk was bombarded by a series of high-speed
projectiles, reducing it to mere bits.

Had it been the guard's body
she'd targeted, it would have completely disintegrated—just as John Price's
had done.

Sensibly accepting this warning,
the guard Farkas dropped his automatic and raced for the exit. Once he was
gone, the woman pointed her weapon in the air, shifted her shapely weight to
one side, and smiled at Kuperman and me.

"Doctors," she said
with a nod. Then she touched the high collar of her bodysuit. "It's all
right," she said, looking at the ceiling. "I've got them."
Turning to us again, she nodded toward the hole in the wall. "I hate to
rush you, Eli, but—"

"Rush me all you want,
Larissa!" Kuperman shouted, bolting for the broken wall and then leaping
through it and into the metal doorway beyond. "Hurry, Dr. Wolfe!" he
called once he was safely aboard what I now realized must be some sort of
vehicle or vessel.

"Yes, do hurry, Dr.
Wolfe," the woman said, approaching me coyly. "My brother's been
anxious to meet you—and so have I." She studied my face and smiled in a
puzzled, slightly amused way. "You're not quite as attractive in person as
in your author's photo, are you?"

Still stunned, I could only say,
"Who is?" which prompted the woman to laugh delightedly and seize my
hand.

"Can you make the
jump?" she said. "Or do you want us to maneuver closer?"

I shook my head, finally getting
a grip on myself. "I can make it," I answered. "But what—?"

"The jump first," she
answered, pulling me at a run toward the hole in the wall. "After that,
everything will make a
lot
more sense!"

And with her delicate but strong
hand holding mine, I leapt out over the narrow corridor of open air beyond the
prison wall, leaving the world and reality as I had always known them behind me
forever.

It was cold inside the vessel, a
chill made all the more cutting by its contrast to the muggy Florida night and
the stale closeness of the visitors' room in the prison. Even before I'd
straightened up after landing on the gently heaving deck of the ship, I began
shivering; and just as I became aware that I was, the same hand that had guided
me through the jump began to rub my back.

"Bit of a shock, isn't
it?" said the young woman Eli Kuperman had called Larissa. I stood and
looked into her enormous black eyes, which formed such a distinct contrast to
the oddly beautiful silver of the hair above and around them; already a bit
smitten, I could only nod agreement to her assessment. Unspoken curiosity must,
however, have been all over my face—why, I was thinking, would anyone capable
of building such a vessel choose to exist in such an uncomfortable
atmosphere?—because the woman quickly went on to explain: "My brother's
gotten closer than anyone to creating superconductors that can operate at
living temperatures—but we still have to keep most of the ship below forty-five
Fahrenheit." She tucked her remarkable weapon into a holster that was
slung on her left side, gave me that bewitching smirk, then looped an arm
through one of mine. "You
must
try
to stay warm, Dr. Wolfe ..."

Before I could find the words to
ask just where we were, Eli Kuperman stuck his engaging, bespectacled face
between us, grinning wide and then tugging at one of the men in coveralls who'd
been waiting in the hatchway during our escape. The second man's face was
nearly identical to Kuperman's, although he wore steel-, rather than
tortoiseshell-, rimmed spectacles: this, apparently, was the archaeologist
twin brother of whom Max's Internet search had failed to produce any mention.

"Dr. Wolfe," Eli
Kuperman said happily. "I see you've met Larissa already. And this is my
brother, Jonah—"

Jonah Kuperman extended a hand,
his manner every bit as engaging at his brother's. "Dr. Wolfe, it's a
pleasure. We've been looking forward to your coming. Your book's been all the
talk aboard ship for the last few weeks—"

"And back there," Eli
said, indicating the two men farther along the corridor, "are Dr. Leon
Tarbell, the documents expert"—I shook the hand of a small, wiry man in
his middle years, whose red eyes glowed hot even when he smiled—"and
Professor Julien Fouché, the molecular biologist." At that a well-built,
gray-bearded man of sixty or so stepped forward, causing my heart to skip one
or two beats: an understandable reaction on meeting a man who not only was one
of the seminal minds of our era but was supposed to have been killed in a plane
crash four years earlier.

"It can't be," I
whispered, shaking his big, very vital hand. "You—you're dead!"

"Not so dead as all
that," Fouché answered with a gruff laugh. "A necessary ruse to
explain my sudden disappearance. My work with Malcolm and Larissa was becoming
quite exclusive, and uncomfortable questions were being asked—"

"All right, gentlemen,"
Larissa said. "You'll have time for mutual admiration later. Right now
we'd better be on our collective toes." The others nodded and began to
move purposefully away. "Prep the turret, Eli!" Larissa called after
them. "I'll be right up! Leon—we'll want full power for combat
maneuvers!"