Protocol 7 (3 page)

Jonathan wouldn’t say. Simon recognized the expression; he’d seen that same mulish, stubborn secretiveness in the man since they had both met in college. It was one of the characteristics that made Jonathan Weiss such an accomplished investigator and operative. And Simon hated his friend for it, if only a little.

“Do you have a screen nearby?” Jonathan said abruptly. “Net ready?”

“Of course,” Fae murmured. It was common for most households to have virtual screens that could appear at will available in nearly every room. Like the AIs, they’d become standard over the past few years.

Bloody technology, Jonathan thought.

A black strip appeared in the rich wood surface of the end table between them; it buzzed very faintly, and a ghostly rectangle opened in the air above it. A beat later it folded out into a box almost as big as the table itself: a holographic display, ready for data. A virtual keyboard glowed into existence in a flat space at the edge of the tabletop, and Jonathan moved to the chair in front of it. His fingers flew.

Simon scowled at the entire display. “What, no secret microdot concealed in your shoe? No handwritten note scrawled on a bit of charred newsprint?”

“Oh, shut up, man. Sometimes you can be so British.” Jonathan reached into the cube and navigated the data by hand, moving to one particular site he had keyed in. “I’m trying to do you a favor here.”

Simon stood over his friend’s shoulder as the hologram blossomed. He nearly dropped his scotch when it revealed a gaudy pink-and-silver fantasy landscape, filled with kittens, dinosaurs, and unicorn ponies.

“What the hell?” he said. It seemed the phrase was becoming his new slogan.

“A little data-espionage tip,” Jonathan said over his shoulder, without looking at him. “These massive multi-player role-playing games, especially the ones for children, are wonderful places to hide data. There are literally millions of children online at any moment, all doing something silly, so many of them with so much content changing all the time that even the spy-nets have a hard time keeping track of it all. And even if one of them stumbles on an encrypted or password-protected file, they don’t bother cracking it—they’re kids. Besides, they can just move on to some other game or character or pinky-blue fairy-thing that’s easier to talk to. There’s just so much.”

He wandered through the over-bright, slightly ridiculous landscape until he came to a cartoon treasure chest with a big blue padlock. “There we go, ItzyBitzyVille,” he said. He tapped the keyboard and gave the hologram a gentle fingertip-shove. The lock popped open. Then, with a single deft stroke, he lifted the lid to reveal a glittering black diamond inside.

“Give me the word,” the diamond said.

“Carmel corn,” Jonathan said.

“Oh, god,” Simon groaned.

“Shh!” Jonathan tapped a five-digit number into the virtual keypad. The diamond turned white and asked for a second password.

“Camembert,” Jonathan said in a strangely hushed voice…

Suddenly, the hologram went black. The fantasy landscape was gone completely, replaced by a flat black cube that swirled for a moment, and then coalesced into the three-dimensional representation of a human head—a particular human head.

A bolt of ice-cold dread cut through Simon. The image was Oliver Fitzpatrick, Simon’s father. And he looked…strange.

Jonathan tapped the PLAY icon at the base of the image and sat back.

“Whoever sees this,” he said, “If anyone does, please get it to my son, Simon Fitzpatrick.” He reeled off Simon’s public e-mail address and his geographical address in the Physics Department, Materials Science Division, at Oxford. “Thank you.”

Always the polite one, Simon thought remotely. I don’t think he can help himself.

The image of his father moved a fraction closer to the camera, nearly filling the screen. He was clean-shaven, smiling; he seemed well-rested and well-fed. At sixty-eight, his father had always been the picture of the twenty-first century English gentleman: impeccably groomed, eternally charming. And that was still true. In fact, he seemed to be doing remarkably well for a man who was supposed to be dead. His eyes were clear and bright, his skin smooth and glowing. He even had a little color…

…A little color in his…

Simon found himself leaning forward and squinting at the image, trying to will it into even greater clarity. “Jon,” he said, half-surprised at the sound of his own voice. “Jon, is he wearing makeup?”

Jonathan frowned at the holo and cocked his head. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I…I think he is.”

“Hello, Simon,” Oliver said, smiling straight into the camera. “I can’t tell you where I am because I don’t know where I am—not exactly, anyway. They call it Station 135. It is somewhere in Victoria Land, but I’ve never seen it marked on a map, paper or digital. And I probably shouldn’t even be telling you that. Ha. Ha.”

Simon felt an involuntary shudder go through him. That’s not how he laughs, he told himself. In fact, he doesn’t laugh at all. He’s not a grim man, not sour…but he’s not a laugher. And the three or four times I’ve heard him do it, it never, ever, sounded like that.

“You know some of the work I’ve been doing,” Oliver said. “It is still in the field of exotic materials science, just like yours, but…very different. But it’s going very well, very well indeed. Most exciting. And you needn’t worry about me. I’m fine. Really. I’m fine. So please, Simon—no matter what you hear, you needn’t worry about me. You understand? No matter what.”

And for the briefest instant—for less than a blink of an eye—Simon saw something underneath the blandly smiling face. A flash of steel, a glint of fear—something.

“He’s lying,” Simon said. “I know it. He’s lying.”

His far-too-cheerful father slapped his knees with great heartiness. “Well!” he said. “Enough breaktime! Back to work! No rest for the wicked, eh? Give my best to Leon, and I know I’ll see you soon!”

And with that, the image froze—just froze, leaving his father’s image smiling broadly and blandly, one hand suspended in the air, staring into empty space forever and ever.

A cold fear blossomed in the pit of Simon’s stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

Leon? Simon repeated to himself. Who the devil is…?

Then he remembered: a childhood vacation, a trip to the Island of Corsica…

No, he couldn’t possibly mean…him?

He turned to his old college friend, almost glaring at him. “How did you get this?”

“It was left behind for me.”

“Where?”

“In your father’s quarters. I found it on a chip there, so I uploaded it to ItzyBitzyVille and destroyed the original.”

“And where were these… ‘quarters?’”

“It doesn’t matter, Simon. He’s not there anymore.”

“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t matter?’ Everyone else is telling me he’s dead. This tells me he’s alive and well weeks after he was supposed to have—”

“I know what it says, man. Come on.”

“No, you come on!”

Jonathan put up a hand to calm his friend. “Look, I just wanted to give you a little comfort, that’s all. I can’t tell you any more than that. Even this much could put us both in grave danger. Just…just know that he’s okay—you saw him, he was fine.”

Simon shook his head stubbornly. “No, he’s not fine. Christ, Jonny, he was faking. You know him well enough to know that! He looked like a damn mannequin; he was wearing makeup for god’s sake!”

“That could have been the lighting. Or poor file res. It could have—”

“Jonathan, something is wrong. I’m incredibly glad you brought this to me. Just knowing he’s alive changes everything—everything. But…but this isn’t right. I need to know more.”

Jonathan looked at the carpet and nodded. “I know. And I can’t tell you. All I can do is give you this.”

He reached into the pocket of his tailored sports coat and pulled out a small book no more than five inches on its long side. As he handed it to his friend, Simon saw gold gilt glitter along the edge of the pages. It was a strangely old-fashioned thing, quaint and slightly mysterious.

Simon took it automatically and weighed it in his hand. It was about the size of an old-fashioned paperback, but denser, more carefully bound.

He suddenly realized what it was. “It’s a diary,” he said, almost to himself. “My father’s diary?”

Jonathan gave him a sad smile. “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

Simon opened the book and found a series of diagrams—notations that looked oddly algebraic but made no sense, grids of black and white boxes with figures and numbers squiggled inside, all in his father’s unique handwriting.

“It’s a chess journal,” he said to himself, more than a little taken aback. “My father’s chess journal.”

Oliver had been an avid chess player. He’d taught Simon how to play when the boy was barely old enough to reach the table, and they had spent endless hours together, at war on the black-and-white battlefield. But Simon had never known him to keep a chess diary. Even the idea of it seemed strange and slightly alien to him.

And now it was the only thing he had to remember his father. That, and an odd video message he somehow knew was a lie.

Jonathan took a small black memory card from his pocket and laid it on an illuminated patch of the tabletop. He touched a few glowing keys, then lifted his face and spoke to the household AI again. “Fae, did you record that feed?”

“Of course, Jonathan.”

“Then erase it, please,” he said as he picked up the black card. “Then erase it again, and then frag the sector. Make it completely unrecoverable. Then lift the Poindexter field. If you leave it on too long, it might be noticed.”

“All right.” The AI didn’t argue for a change; it simply did as it was told.

Jonathan’s fingers flew across the virtual keyboard. Simon watched as his old friend erased the video file, dissolving the black diamond that had been hiding in the treasure chest, and then dissolving the chest as well.

“What are you doing?”

“Crashing ItzyBitzyVille for a few hours. Don’t worry, it’ll come back. Wouldn’t want to traumatize the little ones.” It happened quickly, in little more than a dozen keystrokes.

“Haven’t lost your knack for hacking,” Simon observed grimly.

“Necessary tool of the trade, believe me.” When Jonathan was finished, the cube fell back into the black strip, and then the strip itself faded into the end table’s wood grain. It was gone in moments, as if it was never there.

As if the message itself had never existed.

“Mission accomplished, Jonathan.”

“Thank you, Fae. I always knew you’d make a fine operative.”

“Why, thank you.”

Jonathan turned to his old friend and held out the black card. “This is the one and only copy of his message to you. It’s not recorded anywhere else, not in the cloud or on a hard drive. Touch the corners of the card here and here, and it will project the holo in a meter-wide cube. Touch the other corners, like this…then confirm…and you’ll destroy the file forever. Real Mission: Impossible self-destruct stuff. Clear?”

Simon had been watching very closely. He nodded. “Clear.”

“And I don’t have to tell you not to send it over the net or try and make a copy.”

Simon shook his head. He felt numb from head to toe. “No, you don’t.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Jonathan stood and moved briskly, retrieving his raincoat and shaking out his hat, still damp from the downpour.

Simon got to his feet as well, surprised and a little chilled. “You’re leaving?”

Jonathan gave him a wry smile. “At the risk of sounding cliché…I was never here.”

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“Washington,” he said briefly. He wasn’t inclined to give details.

“Then what?”

He looked frankly at his old friend, his deep brown eyes glittering. “To tell you the truth, Simon…I really don’t know.”

He tightened his belt and turned away. “Walk me to the door,” he said.

Neither man spoke as they crossed the apartment. Simon knew better than to mention the video, not with the possibility of being overheard.

“I hope you’ll come back for a real visit soon,” he said as he put his hand on the front door.

“I will. At least, I’ll try. I just hope I was…helpful.”

Simon offered up a tiny, sad smile. “To quote a wise man, Jonathan, I really don’t know.”

Jonathan nodded. “Fair enough.”

He gave him a brief, heartfelt hug. “Soon, Simon.”

“Soon, Jonathan.”

He pulled away and ducked into the rainstorm. It had only grown worse since his arrival a bare hour earlier. But just before he saw his friend disappear into the night, Simon had a sudden thought. He threw himself into the darkness, ignored the pelting rain, and followed his friend into the drive.

“Jonathan! Wait!”

He caught up to him as he was opening the door to his anonymous black car. Jonathan turned to face him with an oddly guarded expression; one that said ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.

“Just one thing,” Simon said, barely able to hear his own voice over the roar of the rain. “Where is Victoria Land?”

Jonathan grinned in spite of himself and shook his head. “Geography never was your best subject, was it?” He focused his dark eyes on his oldest friend in the world. “Antarctica, Simon,” he said. “Next to the Ross Ice Shelf.”

Then he got into his car and drove away.

Simon stood in the storm for a long moment as the car drifted down the drive, taillights flaring as it turned and surged silently into the night. Then he turned and looked back at his apartment building.

It was one of four flats in an odd little two-story building—pink stone, white cornices, and a circular turret at each end for his octagonal dining room, all windows and wood. Fae had left the porch light on; he could see the flickering fire of the study in the window far to one side and the warm glow in the dining room in the windows of the turret. There was a twisting blue light coming from a window on the far side as well: his neighbor, Mrs. Ellingsworth, was still watching her “telly” late into the night. The multi-colored glow of the display twinkled against her rain-spattered window.

It should have been a comforting sight. He had come to love his digs; his apartment had become a true home for him—not an easy thing to accomplish for a childless, single man in his mid-thirties.