Memoria (26 page)

Dickens
produced a watch
from
his trouser pocket and added as he clasped the bracelet
, "And it was your order not to check his limo."

"How many
of them were there
?"
Claney
disregarded
the
hint.

"Four. Two professionals."

"Which is what?"

"The city war vets. Not your regular manpower: these are professional saboteurs
. They have neurostimulators installed. They have skills. We used to train them during the war. I have reason to suspect that one is
Max
. We've
worked him out twenty-four hours ago.
He's got a boxing club in Harlem.
And
he used to train Shelby all those years back. We
kept tab
s
on him, but now he's disappeared. I believe he was driving Binelli's car. He could neutralize the parking area security
. He could also unblock the gate when we announced code red. He then took care of the pursuing helicopter and
the surviving men and
helped Shelby and the
girl to escape through the
sewers
.

"Find them all!"
Claney
couldn't help himself. "
Eliminate them!" He was about to leave the room when
Dickens
said,

"I don't have enough men, sir."

"How many-"
Claney
was losing his nerve, "how many do you need?"

Dickens
looked at Bow.

"Three hundred would do it,
I think."

"How many?"
Claney
stepped forward to face him. "You have any idea what you're asking for? This is-"

"You want me to find them?"
Dickens
stretched his lips in a grin.
"'I need to check the
drains. I need to go over a few subway lines. The search
area
grows with every minute.
Shelby and his accomplices are well-trained. They're strong. And they
've
got what they came for."

"And you,
Dickens
? Did you get what you came for? All you do is creat
e more problems! The President'
s gone back to
DC
so he's out of our reach.
We ad lib as we go. The whole plan is under threat, and we might have to start the Vaccination without
even contacting our Pentagon
friends
. Just make sure," the Congressman poked the air in front of
Dickens'
face, "
that
we don't have problems with the migrants."

"Their Council is under control. We know all their plans.
"

"We've gone too far! And you-"

"If Bow and his mnemotechs move it, I'll get it done in six hours."

"Six hours?"

"Yes, sir,"
Dickens
glared back at
Claney
.
The Congressman paused.

"
The lab is at your disposal,"
Claney
turned and strode out of the room.

* * *

They walked
tr
ying
to figure out
under which
streets they
were passing
and
which subway stations
threaded
nearby
.
Frank
plodded
following
Max who carried a
flashlight. Maggie
trailed behind
, all three of them
exhausted.

First they had run hard along the drain
s
. Then
Max
had turned off into some hole
in the wall
where they had to crawl over
and under
some sewage piping. The s
tench filled their nostrils
. They
were
covered top to
toe
in something warm and sticky
. Maggie had very nearly thrown up and Frank
ha
d stopped smelling anything at all. The
coach
explained to him that
his nose receptors must have failed
as happened
sometimes
.

Then they'd followed a tunnel along
the
mesh fence of a subway line.
The fence reached the ceiling so they had to
walk until they came
to a gate
facing a new drain entrance.

Frank had long lost any sense of direction. The coach barely spoke; only occasionally he warned them of
obstructions on their wa
y, suggesting a turn or a detour
to avoid the obstacle.

A couple of times they'd hit a dead end. Then they'd come to a gate
with a padlock.
Max
got out his gun, screwed
the silencer on and shot the
lock off. After that, they'd
exit
ed
to another subway line.

Clenching her teeth,
Maggie dragged her bare feet without complaint.
Frank carried the
attaché
case
and held her hand to make s
ure she didn't fall, as she'd already done a couple of times. As they followed the coach in the dark, they couldn’t watch their step very well
and could easily break an arm or a leg
stumbling on
some
loose brick or pipe.

Frank was about to ask the coach for a
breather
when
Max
stopped
. Shining the flashlight on the wall for fear of blinding them, he peered into their faces and said,

"Five-
minute break."

He moved the light underfoot
waiting for them to sit down by the wall, then turned off the flashlight.

In the pitch-
black
tunnel, the
y could now hear the
sounds of subway trains
and the roar of the underground vent system.

"How long have we been going?" Frank asked.

For a moment,
Max
's face appeared in the
weak fluorescent light
from his wristwatch. "An hour," he said. "Maggie? You all right?"

The girl didn't answer.

"Maggie?" Frank took her hand.
She startled.

"I've been thinking about Dad," she said.

"
Barney
's all right,"
clatter
ing his gun and rustling his clothes,
Max
sat next to the girl. "They can't kill him. Memoria needs him as a hostage against us.
I don't think
they're going to kill any of us
until they make sure that we have the recording and there are no other copies of it around."

"Oh
,
great," Frank murmured.

He realized too well,
as did
the coach, that the corporation could always
scan
Barney
's memory
and use their personality correction facilities.
They must have done so already.

"We should have taken Binelli as hostage, too," Frank ventured.
"It was stupid to leave him in the garage. We could have-"

"Dragged him with us underground?" the coach chuckled.

Frank didn't say anything. You couldn't go anywhere far with a morbidly obese pig like Binelli in tow.

"Where are we now?" he leaned forward listening for New York street noises.

"We must be
around the Central
P
ark area," the coach understood
him
.
"It's too quiet here."

"Will they find us
?" Maggie
asked
bravely
, her
voice
tired
.

"We're still one step ahead," the coach answered. Frank realized he was simply trying to humor her.
Things had to be worse than that. "It doesn't mean though that they're too slow to catch us if we give them half a chance. So," the coach glanced at his watch, "three more minutes, and we're out of here."

"I suggest we watch the recording," Frank patted the
attaché
case
by his side.

"Bad
move
,"
Max
said. "We don't have time to
wade through gigs of files looking for the one we need. We've got to find shelter first. Then we'll go through the files at
our
leisure."

"But it could change
lots of things!" the girl said.

Frank didn't expect Maggie to back him up.

"It could," Frank nodded forgetting that
Max
couldn't see him in the dark. "If the recording is any good we could take it to the media-
"
he stopped sensing
Max
's ha
n
d on his shoulder.

"Too early to speak to the media,"
Max
said. "We've no idea what stories they've been fed."

"I got a few reporters film Maggie and myself
back in the building.
I told them I hadn't killed Kathleen. I showed them the
attaché
case
. I told them it contained evidence of my innocence."

The coach sighed. For a few seconds, he sat in silence.

"Okay," he finally said.
"
Let's have a quick look."

Frank pla
ced the
attaché
case
on
his lap,
unclasped the
locks
and lifted the lid
.
The coach turned the flashlight on.

"Why are there bullet holes in the lid?
Look here under the handle. One went right through."

"I was shot at," Frank took out the camera
.
The battery had a deep scratch in the back, but he
turne
d the camera on anyway. "The cord got stuck three floors under Binelli's office. We had to break the window and fight our way to the service elevator.
" He flipped the switch into
video mode and
pushed open a small LCD screen. "You have to thank Maggie for saving me." Frank turned to her and held out his hand. The girl gave him a faint smile and a remarkably strong handshake.

"Turn it on,"
Max
said.

A blurred picture
appeared
on the screen
, followed by
some illegible
text
.
Frank
fingere
d the
knobs, adjusting the
settings. Now they could read the
words
—
which
said nothing to them. It discussed mnemocapsules and
the
various ways of delivering them
—
where to,
it didn't say
. A scheme replaced the text of either a capsule or a phial. It
s
purpose
was
as
clear
as mud.

"
Move it forward a bit," the coach said.

Frank pressed the FF button. The picture
jumped
. For a few seconds, schemes
flashed one after another
.

"Stop it
t
here,"
Max
said.

Frank released the button. Immediately, a new text
—
or rather, a title
—
read:
Chemical Mind Lock.

"A mind lock?" Frank glanced at the coach who
hissed him quiet.

The title was replaced by another scheme, this time of short-term memory structure, complete with pictures of brain
lobes, followed by some charts
showing
the results of animal tests.
T
hen the screen went blan
k.

"What's going on?" Frank pressed every button but the camera didn't come back to life. "Switch on, damn it!"