Soulminder (35 page)

“I suppose not,” Sommer said. “What do we know about Blaine Kaplan?”

“Sixteen-year-old Richie Rich type,” Everly said. “Likes to play with the forbidden fruit, but is terrified his blue-blood Park Avenue parents will disinherit him if he ever flunks a drug test. Walkabout and Soulminder were the logical answers.”

“Pretty expensive logic.”

“Apparently, he was able to pull it off just by tucking away some of his allowance money,” Everly said. “He’s done it a couple of times before.”

“From his allowance money.” Sommer shook his head. “I definitely picked the wrong parents.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Blaine probably will agree with you after Mom and Dad get done with him,” Everly said. “We grilled the whole family for three hours after they got him back in his body, looking for a connection with Chernov. Nothing yet, but we’re still looking.”

And even if there was, Sommer thought bitterly, it would probably be lost in the ground clutter. There were a
lot
of people who might have wanted Chernov dead and could have been suckered into the con man’s double-reverse play. “Anything on the shooter?”

“The kill round was a .300 Winchester short magnum,” Everly said. “Probably fired through an FN Special Police sniper rifle, though it’s possible he modified some other rifle to handle that cartridge. We found the nest he fired from, and the distance alone shows he was definitely a pro.”

“A man like Chernov would hardly hire an amateur.”

“True,” Everly said. “We’ve got the FBI and Interpol running the M.O. through their files—this guy’s too good not to have popped up on the radar before. We’re also working the Kaplan family against that angle, just in case.”

“Probably a waste of time.”

“Probably,” Everly agreed. “You always check these things, just on general principles, but it’s looking more and more like Blaine was just collateral damage.”

“Yes,” Sommer murmured. “And speaking of damage … ”

“Yeah,” Everly said heavily. “Shrill.”

“I assume he’s still in a trap, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Everly said. “But with his body gone … it doesn’t look good. We’ve done a full-scale search of the area, but all the photos of the guy are pretty scraggly, and if he’s cleaned up at all decently the facial-recognition software isn’t going to be much help. Chernov and whoever helped him had this whole thing mapped out. I’m guessing he’s halfway to Venezuela by now.”

“In a stolen body,” Sommer said. “God help us.”

“And while He’s at it,” Everly added darkly, “He’d better help whoever in Manhattan South helped Chernov fiddle the labels and settings to make this happen.”

“If there
was
anyone.”

“Oh, there was,” Everly assured him. “There has to have been. No hacker’s ever gotten through Soulminder security, and they didn’t get through this time. No, they had an inside man. And we
will
find him.”

“I know,” Sommer said, looking toward the dark sky out the window beside him. Just below the jet, looking like they were close enough to touch, the clouds flickered rhythmically with reflections from the flashing running lights.

“But that’s not what you meant, was it?” Everly said. “The
God help us
part?”

Sommer didn’t answer. He’d had variants of the same conversation with a dozen different people over the past few years. There was no reason to expect that having it with his security chief would have any different outcome.

“Because you’ve mentioned some of your concerns to Dr. Sands,” Everly continued.

Sommer felt his lip twitch. And of course Jessica had gone straight to Everly. “I assume Dr. Sands is worried that I’m on the edge of going berserk and denouncing Soulminder before the press or a congressional committee?”

“Something like that,” Everly said calmly. “Dr. Sands wants to live forever. Did you know that?”

Sommer closed his eyes. “She may have mentioned it once or twice over the past twenty years.”

“Yeah,” Everly said. “My clues were her late-night study sessions and spending flurries and the glazed look she gets whenever Soulminder clears her more research money.”

“
Especially
when Soulminder clears her more research money.”

“Pretty much.” Everly paused. “Only not all of that money’s exactly snowy-white clean, is it?”

“
Clean
?” Sommer opened his eyes again, glaring at and through Everly. “You’re joking, right? We’ve got people borrowing druggies’ bodies to get high. We’ve got suicides legally able to will their bodies to other people and a society that’s increasingly all right with that. We’ve got gang members swapping bodies with twelve-year-old recruits so they can commit murders without being charged as adults.”

“Not legally,” Everly pointed out.

“No,” Sommer agreed. “But until Washington gives us full copies of everyone’s personal files so that we can tell the difference between a small eighteen-year-old and a big twelve-year-old with a good fake ID it’s going to happen.” He waved a hand. “And now we’ve got people murdering other people for their bodies.”

He turned to stare at the darkness outside. And none of that even touched on the ghastly reason he and Everly were on their way to Iraq in the first place. “We’ve lost control, Frank,” he said softly. “Somewhere along the way, Soulminder stopped being a last-ditch medical tool and became something else. Something dark and twisted.”

“It’s still a medical tool, Doctor,” Everly pointed out. “And a damn good one. It’s saved a hell of a lot of lives.”

“Granted,” Sommer said. “But along the way … ” He sighed. “You remember Reverend Tommy Lee Harper, Frank?”

“He’d be a little hard to forget,” Everly said sourly. “I hear he’s ditched his big broadcasting friends for a website and streaming video.”

“Keeping up with the times,” Sommer said. “He and I had a private meeting once, back in Soulminder’s early days. I doubt you remember.”

“Oh, I remember,” Everly said. “Mostly I remember warning you not to go alone and you ignoring me.”

“I’d forgotten that part of it,” Sommer confessed. “But something he said at that meeting has stuck with me all these years.
Soulminder is an archangel, so far as earthly creations go. I’m very much afraid that it’ll be beyond your ability to keep it from becoming a demon.
”

For a long moment Everly was silent. “It’s still an archangel, as far as the medical and legal parts are concerned,” he said at last. “As to the rest … it’s really not your fault.”

“Of course it’s our fault,” Sommer retorted. “Congress says it’s okay for us to allow a murder victim to borrow a body so that he can testify against his killer, or that we can let a paraplegic borrow a body so that he can have a few hours of freedom, or that we can store criminals’ souls so that their bodies can be stacked in a warehouse like cordwood at a fraction of a prison’s cost. We could have said no. We
should
have said no.”

“You’re right, we should have,” Everly agreed. “Somewhere along the way we should have drawn the line. But where? The Pro-Witness program was a good idea, and there are a hell of a lot of murderers off the streets because of it. Sure, body-sharing is being abused, but those paraplegics you mentioned
are
getting a chance at life they never could have had before. Every noble idea and good tool can be abused. That doesn’t mean you throw the whole thing out.”

“Then how do you sort out the good from the bad?” Sommer asked. “How do you keep the archangel from becoming the demon?”

“I don’t know,” Everly admitted. “But I’m not the genius here, you are. You’ll find a way.”

Sommer shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“I know you doubt it.” Everly cocked his head. “But you will. I don’t doubt
that
.”

Sommer exhaled loudly. “Your faith in me is touching. Let’s see if you still have it on the trip home.”

Everly inclined his head. “Challenge accepted.”

It was nine o’clock in the morning, local time, when the plane touched down at Baghdad International. The Soulminder security convoy Everly had ordered was waiting inside the private hangar, with one of the security chief’s handpicked officers in command. A sizeable contingent of armed and armored men and women was also present, and had formed a cordon around the plane and cars.

“Dr. Sommer,” the woman in charge said in greeting, offering her hand. “I’m Janine Spendlove; former colonel, U.S. Marines; currently head of Soulminder Security Middle East. Welcome to Baghdad.”

“Thank you,” Sommer said, shaking the proffered hand. Spendlove’s grip was good, her handshake the brief but sincere ritual he’d experienced with other military and ex-military men and women. “Has General al-Hirai been briefed on the reason for our visit?”

“Partially.” Spendlove’s lips twitched in a humorless smile. “Mr. Everly thought it might be better if you sprung the more interesting points on him without a lot of warning.”

“Getting people to hang themselves is always easier if they don’t know which direction the rope is coming from,” Everly added.

“I see,” Sommer said, trying to sit on the anger that had started again toward a slow boil as soon as they entered Iraqi airspace. There was no proof, after all, that the Minister of Defense was actually involved in the alleged atrocities.

At least, not yet.

“Which car do you want, sir?” Spendlove asked, gesturing behind her at the eight identical black town cars, all of which featured the same tinted windows and heavy-riding look of armored vehicles.

In reply, Everly produced an eight-sided die, held his tablet up and flat to the ground, and rolled the die onto it. It came up a three. “Third from the front,” he told her, putting the die away.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “With your permission, I’d like to ride with you. We can get a head start on the briefing that way.”

Everly gestured. “Lead on.”

A minute later the motorcade was driving down the wide road leading toward the city proper. “No official military escort?” Sommer asked.

“Offered and declined,” Spendlove said. “There was no polite way of asking them to pick up escort after we left the hangar, and we
certainly
didn’t want the General’s men seeing which specific car you were riding in.”

“Good call,” Everly said. “So what’s the current political and military situation?”

“Well, sir,” Spendlove said, opening her tablet, “as of oh-seven-hundred today … ”

General Faraaz al-Hirai was a tall, stocky man with a Saddam Hussein mustache and sharp, piercing dark eyes. The smile he flashed as he welcomed his visitors into his office, Sommer noted, didn’t make it past the mustache to his eyes. “I trust you had a pleasant flight?” he asked politely as he gestured Sommer and Everly to a pair of overstuffed, extremely comfortable chairs that had been set up across the half-acre of polished mahogany that served as his desk.

“Pleasant enough,” Sommer said.

“It was also long and tiring,” Everly added, pushing back his jacket sleeve and peering at his watch. “And my biological clock is still set on D.C. time, which is currently one in the morning. Can we skip the pleasantries and get on with it?”

“Certainly,” al-Hirai said. The words and tone were civil enough, but his eyes frosted over a bit. “I appreciate a man who goes straight to business.” He looked back at Sommer. “As I understand it, Dr. Sommer, your people are accusing someone in my government of using Soulminder for torture.”

“It’s more than just an accusation, General,” Sommer said. “We have proof that certain of your dissidents have died, returned to their bodies, then died again. Some of them multiple times.”

“Things are not always as they seem, Doctor,” the general said equably. “As it happens, I have personally looked into this situation. The truth is that the enemies of our nation that you refer to have deliberately engineered these incidents.”

“The
prisoners
have engineered their own deaths?”

“Indeed,” the general said. “Their goal, of course, being to discredit the government.”

“I wasn’t so much concerned with the goal as I was the mechanics,” Sommer said. “How exactly did they pull off multiple suicides while in your custody?”

The general scowled. “Poison, of course,” he said. “Small packets hidden in various parts of their body. One of the prisoners actually swallowed several packets before being taken into custody, each nestled in a slow-dissolve casing so that one death would follow another in succession a few hours apart.” He gestured to the computer on his desk. “I have all the relevant records and documents.”

“I’m sure you do,” Sommer said. He’d expected al-Hirai to push back against the charges, but he’d assumed the stonewalling would take the traditional form of blaming someone else in the regime, either some flunky lower down the chain of command or someone in an entirely different ministry. Trying to invoke a prisoner conspiracy at least bought him points for originality. “And the purpose of this supposed discrediting? I assume they didn’t think such actions per se would alter your government’s stance on whatever issue they disagree with you on.”

“The actions of so few would certainly not have any such effect,” al-Hirai said grimly. “But if they can persuade you that these deaths are our doing, they may persuade you to shut down our Soulminder facilities.” He smiled faintly. “There is an obscure but relevant proverb about a flea destroying a village by biting an elephant. If they can spread unrest from the small fringe to the middle and upper classes, they believe they can create a popular uprising against us.”

And then, as if to punctuate his accusation, the office’s side wall blew in.

Sommer found himself kneeling on the floor beside his chair without any memory of how he’d gotten there. Blinking through the swirling dust, he saw the indistinct form of a young man stride in through the ragged hole. “Dr. Sommer?” he called through the ringing in Sommer’s ears. “Dr. Sommer?”

From the general’s side of the desk came a sharp, snarly-sounding Arabic word, the sound of a man who was angry, startled, frightened, or all three.

Small wonder. As the young man continued to approach through the floating debris Sommer saw that he was not only hefting a large handgun but also wore a dynamite-laden vest. In his left hand was a small cylinder, wired to the vest, almost certainly a dead-man detonator. “Dr. Sommer?” he called again.