The Phoenix Code (30 page)

She spoke fast. "We're in the Country Inn by Ayres at Alpine, south of San Diego."

Raj came to the screen. "Hello, Father."

"Raj!" Relief washed over Sundar's face. "Are you all right? People have been asking for you, military types."

"Who?" Raj sounded calm. If Megan hadn't been next to him, she wouldn't have known he was angry. But she recognized the tight set of his jaw.

"A general," his father said. "Man named Graham. He told us to let him know if you contacted us."

"What else did he say?"

"He asked about Dr. O'Flann—" Sundar's image vanished, replaced by blue screen.

Raj frowned at Megan. "Why did you cut him off?"

"I didn't." She looked around at them, her unease growing. "One of you did."

"I didn't touch a thing," Ander said.

Raj's voice hardened. "You don't need to." He indicated a light glowing on the console. "It's receiving IR right now."

"In case you forgot," Ander said, "you turned off my IR."

"Nothing in you stays off for long, does it?" Raj said.

Indeed
, Megan thought. Had Ander found a way to reactivate his wireless functions? He had claimed in Las Vegas that he could "turn off" his conscience by redesigning his nanofilaments using infrared signals. She didn't believe it; such a process required technology he didn't have, besides which, he obviously still had a conscience. But he might have been running rudimentary tests on the procedure. It would explain the power surges Raj had detected at NEV-5. Using it to make dramatic changes in his own hardware was probably impossible, but simply toggling on his IR would be a lot easier.

"How could Raj have done anything?" she asked Ander.

"Who knows what devices he's had implanted in his body?"

"That's a load of bull," Raj said.

"Like your father's death?" Ander asked.

This new knowledge felt like a knife to Megan, honed and piercing. "What else did you lie about?" she asked Raj.

"I didn't lie." He met her gaze steadily. "The man who died was like a father to me."

"You said he
was
your father."

"Insisted, in fact." Ander's eyes glinted with triumph.

"I don't owe either of you an explanation," Raj said, "How I choose to mourn is none of your damn business."

Megan spoke quietly. "You could have told us. This makes it that much harder to trust anything you say."

"Yes, I'm fallible. What do you want, an apology for my imperfections? Neither of you have any right to condemn me for the way I grieve."

"Oh, you're good," Ander said. "So convincing. Tell me something. When you stole the Phoenix Code, did you always intend to blame me? I'll bet you didn't count on me being the one who discovered you."

"Phoenix Code?" Megan asked. "What is that?"

"Good question," Raj said.

"It's in the files he took," Ander said. "Something about a code. I didn't understand." He indicated Raj. "He knows."

"Yeah, right, Ander." She turned to Raj. "And now I suppose you'll tell me that you have no idea what he means."

"What he means," Raj said, "is that he slipped up and revealed something about those Pentagon files that only he could know. Now he's trying to cover himself."

"I don't believe either of you," Megan said.

"We have to call Professor Sundaram back," Raj said. "He must wonder what happened."

"I'm sure he's contacted the authorities by now," Ander said. "They've probably sent someone here." Malice tinged his voice. "Better make sure you have your stories straight, Raj."

"Why do you call him Professor Sundaram?" Megan asked. "Why not father?"

Raj just shook his head. "Leave it alone."

"That's a great excuse," Ander said. " 'Leave it alone. I'm grieving. Poor me. I've been trapped in my own lies.' "

"Ander, stop." Megan doubted Raj had lied about his history; it was in his files, though without the detail he had revealed in Las Vegas. Given how little he had known his father, he had reason to be more formal with him.

She sat at the console. Instead of Raj's father, she called her contact in Las Vegas. The man who answered didn't seem surprised to see her. He put her through to Major Kenrock in Washington.

After she related their situation, Kenrock said, "Stay at the Inn. We already have people on the way. They should be there soon. FBI. We've given your name as the contact. They know a kidnapping took place across state lines, but no more."

"I understand," Megan said.

Although Kenrock spoke with them all, he mentioned nothing about the Everest Project. Megan understood: they didn't have the security here for a full debriefing. Until they had the go-ahead, they would say nothing about Ander's true nature, not even to the FBI.

When they finished with Kenrock, Raj said, "I'll phone my father."

"Okay." As Megan stood up, a knock came at the room.

"Already?" Raj said. "He wasn't kidding when he said 'soon.' "

Ander paled as if real blood were draining from his face. "Megan, don't let anyone turn me off."

She laid her hand on his arm. "They don't know you can go off." Now more than ever she wanted him awake, not only to monitor his condition, but also because Raj troubled her.

At the door, she looked through the peephole. Four men in blue suits stood outside, nondescript and precise. They might as well have been wearing neon signs that blared FBI. She opened the door, but left on the chain and looked through the narrow opening. "Yes?"

"Dr. O'Flannery?" The man in front held up a badge that identified him as Dennis Knoll, with the FBI. The other three men also showed their badges.

Megan took off the chain. But when she opened the door, the agents suddenly changed. Three drew guns from shoulder holsters under their blue coats, gripping the weapons with both hands. She froze, staring at them. Did they think
she
was the kidnapper?

From the room behind her, Raj said, "Megan, the gun."

She realized she was still holding the assault rifle. With careful moves, she dropped the weapon.

"Step back," Knoll told her. "Raise your hands above your shoulders."

After she backed away, holding up her hands, he picked up the rifle. Then the FBI men came inside and closed the door. For the second time, she, Raj, and Ander submitted to a search, though these men used more courtesy than the California trio. Their caution didn't surprise Megan, given the crime. Ander stiffened when the agents touched him, his distrust almost palpable. Despite his claim that he only mimicked human emotions, it was hard to believe he didn't feel them.

After they finished the search, everyone relaxed. Knoll nodded to Raj. "It's a relief to see you and your team well, Dr. Sundaram."

Megan wondered why they spoke to Raj. She headed the project. But then, they probably knew little or nothing about Everest.

"Thank you." Raj had a guarded expression. "Where to now?"

"To an office downtown," Knoll said. "Later we'll go into San Diego. Do you have everything you need? The sooner we get moving, the better."

"Believe me," Raj said. "We're more than ready."
 

The FBI van waited in the parking lot, shaded by a tree. Sleek and black, it had wheels instead of hoverports and a heavy construction that suggested an armored body. The windows in the back had been opaqued.

Knoll opened the side door for them, and Megan climbed inside with Ander, followed by Raj. Ander had become withdrawn, as if he were concentrating on images or sounds beyond normal senses. His distraction worried her.

Raj and Megan sat in the middle seat and Ander took the one in front of them. One agent sat next to Ander and another in the seat behind Megan and Raj. Roland Hiltman, the third agent, slid into the passenger's side up front, while Knoll took the driver's seat. All four men moved with an expert precision that suggested years of experience in the type of jobs you rarely talked about. It puzzled Megan. Their demeanor didn't fit, though she couldn't say why.

The heat inside the van pressed down on them, worse than outside, where the mountains and forest gentled the desert's bite. As they pulled out of the parking lot, Ander said, "Can you turn on the air-conditioning?"

"Sure." Hiltman flicked his finger through a holo on the dash and the AC fan started. His hands caught Megan's attention. He had calluses.

As the vehicle hummed along the road, Hiltman turned on its computer. Megan watched with discreet attention. He started some sort of monitoring process, and different views of the interior came up on four screens in the dash. But when he took their names and asked a few questions, he recorded their responses in his palmtop, a unit he kept separate from the van's computer.

Megan frowned. The situation just didn't fit. She found it hard to believe the agents had ridden without air-conditioning in such a hot vehicle. It might have heated up while it sat in the lot, but only a short time had passed from when the agents showed up at the room until everyone came out to the van. Nor could it have taken long for the agents to walk from their vehicle to the room, even if they stopped at the front desk of the Inn. And the van had been parked in the shade. So what had made it so hot?

Other details also tugged at her, though none were all that strange by themselves. Reasons existed for the agents to talk to Raj instead of her: they didn't know she headed the project, they felt more at ease with him, he was older. Reasons existed for the calluses on Hiltman's hands. Did Alpine have an FBI office? Perhaps not, but that didn't mean they couldn't be using some other office. Taken separately, each fact could be explained.

All together, however, they felt inconsistent—unless these people weren't FBI. If someone had traced the hovercar to the hotel and stayed outside to monitor them, enough time could have passed for the van to heat up. They also seemed to know more about Raj than her. Why? The hackers had only recognized Raj. If these men
weren't
FBI, then their showing up as agents implied they had eavesdropped on her talk with Kenrock. It all pointed to the California trio.

You're being paranoid
, Megan told herself. Fine. So where were they going? Knoll had taken Highway 8 south, away from San Diego, down into the desert.

"Mr. Knoll," Megan said. "Where are your offices?"

"We'll be there soon," he answered.

"Where are they?" she repeated.

No answer.

Megan exchanged glances with Raj. They didn't risk speaking. Instead, Raj leaned forward and put his hand on Ander's shoulder, as he had often done at NEV-5 when he wanted to run a test on the android's wireless capability.

The agent sitting next to Ander glanced back. "No contact."

Raj regarded Hiltman with the unfathomable gaze he took on when he wanted to mask his expressions. Then he sat back in his seat. Megan hoped Ander had understood Raj's message.

Hiltman continued to monitor them, alternating his attention between his palmtop and the dash computer. The van hummed down the mountains, past rocky hills and open fields.

Suddenly Hiltman froze. Then he unclipped the light stylus on the dash and worked at the light screen set in the padded surface. Ander never flicked an eyelash, but Megan could tell he was up to something, hacking Hiltman's computers, she hoped. Although she still didn't know if Ander had found a way to reactivate his IR, she didn't see how else he could have cut off the phone when they were talking to Raj's father. Raj hadn't been holding a palmtop, the FBI search came up with no devices on him, and his medical file had listed no IR implants in his body. That left Ander. For once she was glad he had become accomplished at outwitting them.

"Got it!" Hiltman twisted around and spoke to Raj. "Turn it off."

Raj gave him a blank look. "Turn what off?"

"Don't play stupid," Hiltman said. "Deactivate the android."

Damn.
Megan clenched her fist on her knee. They
had
to be associated with the California group. How had they traced the hovercar? Its computer hadn't linked into any nets. Wireless links from the hackers wouldn't help from so far away, especially with a moving target. Ander had destroyed the tracking bug he found in the car's computer, and neither she nor Ander had located any other rogue code in its system.

Could the hackers have used a satellite? It was no trivial matter; given the extensive military, economic, and political applications of such systems, especially in recent years, they were heavily secured. If the California group was cracking satellites, that could take them into the realm of international terrorism. The two hackers didn't strike her as the type, but the guard was another story. If they had hired him for protection, he could come from anywhere.

Knoll, the man driving, spoke to Hiltman. "What happened?"

"The droid tried to crack my palmtop," Hiltman said.

Knoll glanced back at Raj. "Turn off its IR."

"Where are you taking us?" Raj asked.

"Turn it off," Hiltman said.
"Now."

"I'm not an it," Ander said. His head jerked. The overly calm tone of his voice made Megan nervous.

"Don't push him." Megan could no longer predict Ander's reactions. She just hoped he used caution. He had walked into a hail of bullets before, but he couldn't survive that again with only a patch job holding him together. It was another reason to leave him active; when he was awake, his self-repair units worked on him much the way medicine helped humans.

They were driving through countryside now, passing fields of quadra, a genetically engineered hybrid that grew taller and thicker than natural grains and needed less upkeep. It thrived even out here in the parched southwest.

"You're not taking us to any FBI office," she said.

Hiltman considered her. "You're an AI expert, aren't you?" He indicated Ander. "Did you program it?"

"You know," Ander said, "you really should stop calling me an
it
." His arm snapped into the seat. He pulled it back against his side.

"I'm not turning anyone off," Raj said.

Hiltman pulled the gun out of his holster. "Do it. Now."

Megan was fed up with people pointing guns at them. "What are you going to do, shoot? You wouldn't have gone to this trouble if you didn't want us alive."