The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

“I used to live just a few blocks over there,” Yang said, pointing down a dark street. Shaw nodded sympathetically.

Just a stone’s throw before the Swiss-French border, the car pulled off onto a narrow side street, and slowed. There was no doubt of their destination—up ahead four cars with flashing lights formed a barricaded around a building.

“Who is he?” Shaw asked the officer as they pulled up. “How did the security sweeps miss him?”

“Georges Pelier. He’s not an employee at CERN and has no access. That’s how they missed him.”

“And yet he was plotting against the Lattice? What was he going to do if he didn’t have access?”

“You didn’t jump ahead or look at the feeds?”

Shaw shook his head.

“Let him show you, then.”

Shaw and Yang got out of the car. Shaw knocked on the window, which rolled down.

“One last thing, is the sphere still inside?”

The officer shook his head. “It shrank and disappeared as soon as he called the news feeds.”

“Do you know what the last message was that it gave him?”

“Just two words.
Confesse
.
Maintenant
.”

“In English?” Though even Shaw had an idea of what the words meant.

“Confess. Now.”

Shaw, Yang, and Georges Pelier were in the small living room of the home, squeezed around a coffee table. Shaw pulled his wrap off his forearm and laid it flat on the table in front of Pelier. Pelier waited until it was near enough and then welcomed Shaw and Yang in French.

The wrap translated. “Good evening, Officer. Would you care for a glass of wine?”

Shaw nodded.

Pelier smiled. He went away and Shaw recalled the glass of wine he’d been contemplating back in Paris. He needed to remember to revisit that moment. There was something important there.

“Sir, do you think there’s a chance he’ll try to poison us?” Yang whispered.

“The
Sûreté
would know if he intended to kill us. He’d be thinking about it right now.”

Yang nodded and moved away.

“But you can still be the taste tester if you want, Yang,” Shaw said.

Yang rolled his eyes.

Shaw glanced at the screen on the wall. It was another news feed. In French, but he recognized his own name and Pelier’s. He shook it off.

Pelier returned from the kitchen carrying a tray with three glasses and a bottle. Yang picked up the bottle and ran his finger over the label. He sniffed it carefully. “An excellent selection,” he said and Shaw raised his glass to him.

Pelier smiled after he heard the translation and sipped at a glass. “Are you here to arrest me, Officer?”

“It’s Colonel, actually, Mr. Pelier. And I’m not. The Geneva
Sûreté
is in charge of your case, they will be making those decisions. We are here to interview you. Your threat to the Geneva Lattice might give us information about the attack in Nevada a few days ago.”

“Of course. I hope I can be of some help,” Pelier said.

“Somehow I doubt that, Mr. Pelier.”

“They told me to confess. So I can only assume that my confession will help their cause. Otherwise, why would they ask me to do it?”

When it came down to it, Shaw had the same question.

“Perhaps if you truly wanted to foil your attackers, you should conclude this interview right now,” Pelier said, with a slight giggle.
Was he drunk
?

“You called a feed to confess to having a sphere, is that correct?”

“Yes. That and much, much more.”

Shaw didn’t rise to the obvious bait, doing everything he could to refuse the game and gain control of the interview. “How long have you had the sphere?”

“Eight months.”

“Were you expecting it?”

“Absolutely not. I came home from work and there it was, not ten centimeters from where your wrap is now.”

“There was a message on it? Writing?”

“Yes. It spoke of a plan. A massive, global uprising against the Lattice. They honored me by inviting me to join them. Of course I accepted.”

“This was in French, I take it?”

“But of course,” Pelier laughed. “Why learn any other language, even English, when we have these,” he said, waving his glass of wine toward the wrap.

“How was the sphere’s French?” Yang cut in. “How did it read to you?”

“An excellent question! The French was translated, I should say. It had no nuance, no dialect. She wrote with short phrases, like an American, though that might have as much to do with the medium as it does with the messenger. I learned quickly that the spheres were not ideally suited for long discussions.”

“You said ‘she.’ Do you know for sure that you were writing back and forth with a woman?” Shaw asked.

“New French defaults to the feminine form. Your wrap translation made more of my words than I did, I’m afraid.”

“So—man or woman?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“So they invite you out of the blue to join a global uprising against the Lattice? And you just say yes?”

“I’m sure they did their research before they sent the sphere. My doubts about the Lattice have been here for all the world to see,” Pelier said, tapping his temple.

“What was your role?”

“To destroy the Geneva Lattice immediately after the American Lattice had been destroyed.” Pelier giggled again.

Yang and Shaw exchanged glances. “That’s an awfully big role for just one person.”

“I’ve been ready to strike for more than six months.”

“How is it that hundreds of people have attacked the American Lattice, and failed, but you alone can destroy the Geneva Lattice?”

“The American Lattice is a tower, and it makes a tempting target. The Geneva Lattice is underground, and much more difficult to destroy.”

“You seem to be making my point for me, Mr. Pelier.”

“The Geneva Lattice is in the old tunnels built for the Large Hadron Collider nearly one hundred years ago. Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“And do you know where those tunnels are?”

“Under Geneva. A giant loop between France and Switzerland.”

Pelier waved his hand. “You have no imagination! You say ‘under Geneva’ but you don’t know what that means. Yes, underground. Under
this
ground. Under my home.”

Shaw and Yang instinctively looked at their feet.

“There is a small pipe near this home. Not more than twenty centimeters in diameter. But it’s enough.”

“Enough for
what
?”

“A narrow ventilation shaft, unused and mostly forgotten. It runs many meters down into the ground. But at the base of it: the Geneva Lattice.”

“What were you going to do?”

“I spent five months creating more than twenty barrels of sulfuric acid, being as careful as any chef. They’re all in the basement, hooked up to that small pipe with a fast pump. Within ten minutes of the signal, I could have pumped enough acid down there to eat through the protective shielding and then envelop the Lattice. It would have just simply … melted. Never to be rebuilt again.”

Shaw and Yang stared at him, stunned. Shaw didn’t know the chemistry, but he had to assume that this wasn’t idle speculation.

“Where is the acid now?” Shaw choked out, trying to recover his voice.

“Still in the basement, under guard by the
Sûreté
.”

“If it’s just waiting there, why didn’t you destroy it when you had the chance?” Yang asked. He seemed genuinely dumbfounded.

“Once the attack on the American Lattice failed, I was instructed to wait for their next attempt. Only a coordinated attack on both installations would be successful. Taking out one Lattice, but not the other, solves nothing.”

“But instead of waiting, you
confessed
?”

“I told you, I was instructed to confess immediately.”

“You had the power to destroy the Geneva Lattice single-handedly. Didn’t you want to argue with them? Even a little bit?”

Pelier shook his head. “The decisions are not mine to make. If the masterminds behind this plot were willing to abandon one means of destroying the Lattice, I am sure it was for a good reason, and that they have another means at hand. I am … a pawn. Sacrificed for a greater position. The board is being set. Soon there will be nothing left but one outcome. Checkmate.”

Shaw and Yang left Pelier to the
Sûreté
, who promptly escorted him to their waiting cars. Shaw had to see it for himself. He ventured down the steps of the basement and saw the double-stacks of barrels. The haz-mat suits and cautious actions of the men in the basement convinced him that the acid was real. Would it have caused the devastation Pelier had predicted?

He called Braybrook. It was still only early evening back in the States.

Shaw skipped any greeting. “Could he have pulled it off, sir?”

“All he needed to do was flip a switch on the pump, and the Geneva Lattice was as good as gone.” Braybrook sounded rattled. “Sensors would have detected the Lattice eating away at the casing, but it was in a spot we couldn’t have gotten access to in time.”

“And in the cold of the Lattice containment room? Wouldn’t the acid have frozen too?”

“It’s some special compound, designed not to freeze. That’s all I know. Just that it would have worked.”

Shaw closed his eyes. “I can’t believe it would have been that easy.”

“It wasn’t, exactly. The Lattice isn’t directly underneath his home, but it’s close. The ventilation pipe was extended to get closer to the Lattice.”

“Who extended the pipe?”

“It grew. Same substance: nitrogen diamond.”

Shaw was dumbfounded. “You’re telling me they can grow pipes as well as spheres with this stuff?”

“Yes. And who knows what else.”

There was silence between them.

“It’s like all our security has been a joke, sir. For months, they’ve been sitting on this. They could have taken the Lattice out whenever they wanted to.”

“But they wouldn’t have. Pelier was right. It didn’t make sense to destroy it once the attack on our Installation here failed. But we had no idea we were so close to losing them both. Turns out that your quick thinking with the nanoshock and Iverson firing the last nuke at the hovercraft was truly our last line of defense. Change a variable, and that’s all it would have taken. Game over.”

“One point eight seconds,” Shaw muttered.

“Exactly.”

“Why give it all away, then? Why tell Pelier to confess?”

Braybrook was silent for a moment. “I’ll tell you the truth, any answer I can think of terrifies me.”

“Me too, sir.”

There was a scramble on the other end of the call, and Braybrook muttered a “gotta go” before ending the call.

Shaw wandered back up to Pelier’s living room, lost in his thoughts.

Yang was on the couch with Shaw’s wrap in hand. He stood, as if he’d been caught snooping. “Sir.”

“Braybrook confirmed it. Pelier could have destroyed the entire Geneva Lattice.”

Yang looked troubled, but it didn’t seem to be from this piece of news.

“What is it?”

“I saw this on Pelier’s screen, and I thought I must have misunderstood the French. So I looked it up on your wrap.” Yang handed it to him. It was on a screen of continuously scrolling news items.

Shaw blinked, not comprehending. The headline was almost off the screen.

Byron Shaw Expecting First Child. Wife Conceived Four Days Ago.

A surge of emotions. Or had all emotions frozen?

Now this? After all he’d been through tonight, now this?

Ellie was pregnant? This was on the
news
? Shaw was dumbfounded, elated, angry, confused. How had the feeds reached him before Ellie could? Had he accidentally screened a call from her? How was that possible?

“Call Ellie,” he said. His implant buzzed and then he said, “Confirm.”

She was going to be furious that she wasn’t able to tell her own husband, that he—and the world—found out at the same time. And why was this even worth mentioning? How was it anyone’s business? How was it
news
?

Ellie answered, her beautiful avatar in front of him. But it was not the real Ellie. More than anything he wanted to be home in St. Louis with her. “By! I wondered when I would hear from you.”

“Hi, honey,” he said. He felt a tremor in his voice. “Do you have a second?”

“Of course. Let me get somewhere quieter. Have I told you how convenient it is to have a famous husband? I don’t even have to jump during my breaks to see how you’re doing. The search is on all the news feeds. And they all mention it was Byron Shaw’s brilliant wife that suggested it.” She laughed. “OK, I’m in a quiet room. How are you? How was Paris—did you have time to go to that place we found in Saint-Denis?”

“No, there wasn’t time. I was barely in central Paris. I was called to Geneva a few hours ago. You didn’t see?”

“I’ve been swamped. Did you find something?” She sounded excited.

“Listen, Ellie, I was calling because I wanted you to hear it from me.”

“Hear what? What’s wrong? What happened?”

Shaw took a deep breath. “I know.”

“You know? Know who made the spheres?”

“No.
Your
news. I know. It was on the feeds just now.”

“I don’t have any news, By. I’m at the clinic, nothing’s happening here.”

“Ellie. I’m sorry. I don’t know if you were going to surprise me or something, but I know. I can’t believe someone thought it was worth reporting—let alone researching. But I know, Ellie.”

“What the hell are you talking about, By?”

“I know that you’re pregnant.”

Ellie took a breath and held it tight, and in her silence Shaw suddenly understood. His stomach dropped, and he wished he’d had something to eat since that glass of wine.

This wasn’t just a surprise to him. Ellie hadn’t known she was pregnant either. The news feeds had learned it before either of them.

“I’m
pregnant
?”

“Oh my God, Ellie, I am so sorry. It didn’t even occur to me that you hadn’t known. I thought you just hadn’t had a chance to tell me. Or were going to surprise me when I got home.”

“How could—how could
a news feed
know I’m pregnant before I do?”