Split second, p.16
Split Second, page 16
The resort experienced several rebirths over the years, but the 2020 bust was perhaps its most profound. When Knight was considering headquarters locations he learned about this debacle and realized this could be the perfect location. He had snapped up the entire resort for only two hundred million dollars nine months earlier, through third parties that couldn’t be traced to him. He had moved quickly to park his shell corporation in the center of the resort, on the island, while leaving all other properties abandoned.
So here he sat, in desert splendor, while Lee Cargill continued to search for him underground, in all the wrong places.
Not many of the buildings were currently occupied, as Knight’s group was still fairly small. The ones that were occupied were in the center of the island, ringed by outer buildings that contained sensor outposts, electronics, security personnel, and more armaments. Even if scores of attackers somehow managed to reach the island, they would have to fight their way to its center.
In the brief time since he had split from Cargill, he had assembled the greatest collection of human ability the world had ever seen, what he affectionately called his Brain Trust, a group so important he insisted these words be capitalized. He provided these geniuses with unlimited funding, the ability to interact with the best people in the world, state-of-the-art equipment, and treated them like gods. Not surprisingly, his Brain Trust had paid dividends already, and the prospects for a steady stream of game-changing breakthroughs were excellent. And this had all been accomplished in only nine months.
It was spectacular progress if he did say so himself. If he had been God, he dared say he would have been able to rest on the fourth or fifth day instead of the seventh, which would have really screwed up the calendar.
Rourk finally passed through the security gauntlet fifteen minutes later and entered Knight’s penthouse floor, looking like shit. Bloody, dirty, and bleary-eyed. But Knight didn’t care about Rourk’s appearance. All he cared about was the flash drive he had brought, which the returning soldier produced from his front pocket and handed to him.
“Well done, again, Jack,” said Knight, holding the flash drive up to the light with such euphoria it could well have been the Ten Commandments handed down from Mount Sinai, rather than a simple memory stick handed down from Mount Palomar.
“I’m guessing Dr. Jackson can crack this in minutes,” said Rourk.
“Actually, I won’t be using Jackson or anyone else from the Brain Trust. I’ve hired a consultant who is due to arrive in two hours.”
Rourk squinted in confusion. “I don’t understand. Isn’t Gary Jackson the most accomplished computer expert in the world?”
“Yes, but this won’t require his level of brainpower. Why use a nuclear missile to swat a fly? Also, Jackson claims he’s completely loyal to us, but this is too important to take any chances. I can’t risk sabotage. So using someone who doesn’t know why this is important makes the most sense.”
“Understood,” said Rourk.
“I’ll keep you posted on our progress,” said Knight, gesturing toward the door. “In the meanwhile, a doctor is waiting for you in the infirmary. A new hire, Dr. Susan Schlesinger. She’ll take good care of that arm.”
“That would be nice,” replied his injured subordinate. “It’s been a long night.”
26
Jenna Morrison awoke and wiped the sleep from her eyes. She seemed to be in an oversized conference room, with a large center table and a few couches and chairs thrown in for good measure at points along the perimeter. In fact, she realized that she was lying on one of these couches, with a white blanket covering her.
Plants, tables, and upbeat framed posters decorated the room. She continued taking it all in as her eyes came into clearer focus. At the far end of the table, as far away from her as the room would allow, Aaron Blake and Dan Walsh were engaged in a whispered conversation.
She rubbed her eyes again and then removed her hands, expecting the room to disappear and for her to return to reality. Remarkably, the same scene greeted her eyes.
She pulled herself up from the couch and noticed that both men had caught her movement from across the room and were now watching her. “Guys,” she called out. “Uh . . . where, exactly, are we? And how did we get here?”
Blake laughed as she walked over to them along the ridiculously long table and sat at an empty chair.
“Welcome to the party,” said Blake, moving a large nylon duffel bag on the floor beside him so she would have more leg room. “It’s just after eight Tuesday morning. Dan and I have been up for over an hour, but we didn’t want to wake you.”
“Thank you,” said Jenna in sincere appreciation. She had never needed an extended slumber this desperately.
“To answer your questions,” continued Blake, “we are now in my apartment complex’s community center.” He waved a hand to encompass the large room. “Not bad, huh? Residents can sign up to use it from eleven in the morning until nine at night for kids’ parties, adult parties, wine tasting, pot lucks, arts and crafts fests, whatever. It’s a board room slash party hall.”
He grinned. “When you live in an apartment complex as swanky as this you can expect top-of-the-line amenities. There is a pool and Jacuzzi just outside of the door, and a weight room about twenty yards the other way.”
“And, what, you just happened to have a key?” asked Jenna.
Blake smiled crookedly. “More or less. Let’s just say that disabling alarms and breaking and entering are some of the things a good private investigator needs to master. As to how we got here, I carried you.”
Jenna shook her head. “I have absolutely no memory of that.”
“Yeah, you were out pretty cold,” said Walsh.
Her eyes widened. “Was there trouble?” she asked in alarm. “Why did we need to relocate?”
“No trouble,” said Blake, but a second later he added, “at least not yet. After you passed out, it occurred to me that the guy named Rourk saw me clearly on Palomar Mountain. Once he got the flash drive, I’m confident we fell off their priority list. But still, it never hurts to err on the safe side. I think we would have been okay last night in my apartment, but why take the chance? And we’ll be back on the radar very soon, no matter what.”
“Right,” said Jenna. “When they break through the password and discover it’s a decoy.”
“Exactly. When this happens, they are not going to be happy. May have happened already, but whenever it does, Rourk will be examining the photos of every PI in California and beyond looking for me.”
“I think changing locations was a wise move,” said Jenna. “From here on out, I don’t think sleeping soundly in your apartment will be great for anyone’s health.”
“Agreed,” said Blake. “Turns out this was a perfect place to relocate. No windows to the outside, with several buildings between us and my unit. We’re so tantalizingly close to where we were, yet so far away. If they did breach my apartment last night and discovered we had left, I’d bet my life they’d never think we relocated here.”
Walsh grimaced uncomfortably. “You pretty much did bet your life,” he observed.
Blake smiled but didn’t reply.
“I took down Aaron’s website,” said Walsh, “and did my best to remove all traces of his image from the Internet. This should buy us some more time, but not forever. Information once on the Internet is stubbornly difficult to remove for good. Like a bad penny, it keeps resurfacing.”
“I checked the cameras in my apartment and outside of my door remotely when I awoke this morning,” said Blake. “And I reconned the entire complex on foot. With great care. In my practiced opinion, no one came calling last night, and no one is staking out my apartment now. But we’ll have to be careful when we leave in case this changes.”
He lifted a small cardboard box from an empty chair beside him and extended it toward Jenna. “Granola bar?” he offered. “You can have as many as you’d like, but since we had these for lunch yesterday, I don’t want you getting spoiled. I can’t let you have these gems every meal.”
Jenna laughed and removed one of the bars. “I understand. And after this, I’m prepared to forgo these for the rest of my life if it will help our cause,” she added wryly.
A wave of guilt passed over her for allowing herself to laugh, to be momentarily happy in the wake of Nathan’s death. She had made great efforts to push this event from her mind, pretend it hadn’t happened, so she could have the best chance to survive and exact revenge.
But had she been too successful at this?
After another moment of consideration, she decided that she had not been. If she continued to ping-pong between feelings of crushing remorse and feelings of guilt for temporarily not feeling remorse, she would lose her mind.
She took a deep, cleansing breath. The need for sleep could be a terrible burden, but she was glad sleep existed. If it didn’t, one would never get any real downtime. This way, no matter what happened the night before, you could wake up and feel like you had a new lease on life, a clean slate, that a chapter had ended and a new one had begun.
“So this is what it feels like to be almost human,” she said with contentment.
“Glad you finally managed some real shut-eye,” said Blake. “But just so you know, you faked being human really well, even under duress and sleep-deprived.”
“Thanks,” she replied.
Walsh nodded his agreement. “Aaron and I discussed it while you were still sleeping. We both saw you yawning and nodding off occasionally while I was walking through a very complex subject, and yet you’d miraculously pop up with a relevant observation or insight, or a great question. We decided you’re impressive even when you’re half zombie.”
“Probably the strangest compliment I’ve ever received,” she said. “But, thanks. I’ll take it.”
She bit off a big chunk of granola bar and began chewing. After she swallowed she gestured to the nylon duffel bag on the ground beside Aaron Blake. “So what’s in there?” she asked.
“Weapons, ammunition, a bug detector, night vision equipment, a set of lock picks, bolt cutters.” Blake shrugged in mock innocence. “You know . . . the usual.”
“Right,” said Jenna with a smile. “So what now?” she asked. “A visit to your friend Greg?”
Blake nodded. “Exactly. He should have Nathan’s file accessible by now, and also set up in the cloud with a trigger we can use to release it if we decide to.”
“I’ll review Nathan’s work as quickly as I can,” said Walsh. “With luck I’ll be able to grasp it sufficiently to understand its full implications. If not, I’ll be able to determine which academics would be able to help. My vote would be to visit one of these people immediately. The faster we know why this is so important to the people who killed Nathan, the better, in my opinion.”
“I agree,” said Blake. “So let’s get moving.” He turned toward Jenna. “In addition to breaking in here, I broke into the pool locker rooms, men’s and women’s. Dan and I have already showered, but we can wait for you if you want to take a quick one. I brought a few new toothbrushes and some toiletries with me from my apartment as well.”
“You just happened to have unopened toothbrushes just lying around?”
“Absolutely.”
“I have no idea what to even think about that,” said Jenna playfully.
“I see,” said Blake with a smile. “You can understand complex physics and mind-bending time-travel logic, but a man with a stash of new toothbrushes has you totally stumped.”
Jenna laughed.
Blake let her enjoy this bit of levity for several more seconds and then said, “As much as I hate to spoil the mood, we really do need to get a move on. I haven’t even discussed this with Dan, but we can’t take my car, which will cause a further delay in getting to Greg.”
Jenna nodded. “Of course. Because if they identify you, they identify your car.”
“Right.”
“We can take mine,” offered Walsh helpfully.
“Thanks, but I’m afraid we can’t,” said Blake. “They have to be wondering where you disappeared to last night. Your car is a hot potato, also.”
“Rental car?” said Walsh.
“No. That’s traceable.”
“I see,” said Walsh, nodding sagely. “We physicists don’t know much about cloak and dagger, but I get it now. You’re suggesting that we’ll have to steal a car.”
Blake laughed. “No!” he said emphatically. “If you want to stay off the radar screen, stealing a car is a really bad move.” He nodded toward Jenna with a grin still on his face. “Besides, we already have one stolen car.”
Before she could misinterpret these words as a criticism rather than an attempt at humor, he hastened to add, “Not that Jenna had any other choice. She did the exact right thing. But in this case, we do have a choice.”
“Okay,” said Walsh. “I give up. What’s our other choice? Public transportation?”
“Really?” said Blake. “A full professor of theoretical physics at UCLA, and you can’t get this one?”
Walsh continued to blink at him stupidly.
Blake shook his head in amusement. “We buy a car,” he said. “I guarantee I can find dozens listed online that are being sold by their owners within five miles of here. I’ll find one for a few grand, take a cab to the bank so I can pay cash, and then take a cab to the car. We’ll be on our way to visit my friend in no time.”
Walsh looked disappointed. “Right. Buy a car. I guess I’ve watched too many movies. I have to admit, I was looking forward to seeing how you would go about stealing one.”
“Uh-huh,” said Blake playfully. “One adventure through a maze of steam tunnels and you’re ready to go over to the dark side. Maybe that sign we saw in the tunnels had it right—maybe we did travel through Hell.”
Walsh laughed, but Jenna’s expression remained grim. Because she had little doubt that her own journey through Hell was far from over.
27
R. Sylvia Tagert wasn’t a morning person. She needed to get herself going, get the blood flowing. She could stay out all night without feeling the least bit tired, but when she first awoke she felt like a slug.
And that was when she had gotten the duration of sleep she expected.
On this morning she had been rudely awakened earlier than usual, and barely had enough time to brush her teeth and throw on a white terrycloth bathrobe.
The doorbell rang, right on schedule. It was a little before seven and she had yet to take the first sip of her first cup of coffee, which explained why she was in the mood to kill someone, preferably the man she saw on a small plasma screen waiting impatiently at her door.
“Hold up your ID to the red camera indicator light,” she shouted through the closed door.
She relished the annoyed look on his face. “Didn’t your superior just contact you and tell you I was coming?” he shouted back.
“He told me someone with proper ID was coming, yes.”
The man all but snarled as he pulled out his wallet, opened it, and held it steadily in front of the camera. The ID showed he belonged to a government agency that she was sure didn’t exist, and that his name was Nathanial Lubbers, which she doubted was true, either.
She unlatched the door and swung it open. “Make this quick,” she said. She gestured to her robe. “And thanks for the short notice.”
Sylvia knew she was being less than hospitable, that this could well be very important, and that this man was just trying to do his job. But dammit, she couldn’t help being wired the way she was wired. Early mornings and lack of coffee made her grumpy. She was normally pleasant, cheerful, and well liked, but even her closest friends knew better than to wake her early.
The man entered her small home and shoved his wallet back into his back pocket. “Sorry about the lack of notice,” said Joe Allen, trying to be friendly. “And this should be very quick.”
She sat on a chair in her family room and gestured for him to take a seat across from her on a small black leather sofa. “So what can I do for my friends in Black Ops?” she asked when he had seated himself.
“You pulled some footage Monday morning of a residential neighborhood in San Diego. In La Jolla to be precise. I just want to know who you sent this to.”
She wasn’t sure what to expect, but this wasn’t it. Aaron Blake had told her he needed this footage for a new case he was on, but couldn’t tell her the details. She had been happy for him, since at least it wasn’t another divorce case, and no one deserved success more than Blake.
“What?” she said, feigning confusion. “Why would you possibly ask that?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but your superior did tell you to give me your full cooperation, correct? So let me worry about my motivations, and you can worry about answering my questions.”
Sylvia’s agile mind had come awake in a hurry. She needed to come up with a strategy, and quickly. She had experienced any number of tricky situations, and one didn’t get far in the CIA without being able to think their way out of a box.
But what was in this box? What had Blake gotten himself into?
Whatever it was, she knew only one thing: Aaron Blake was a good man. Whatever he was involved with, he was the guy wearing the white hat. But that didn’t automatically make the man across from her the bad guy. She decided she needed to test the situation further before she would give him anything. See how he reacted.
“I didn’t send it to anyone,” she replied as innocently as she could. “It was for a project I’m working on, by myself. What made you think it was for someone else?”
“And what project would that be?” said Allen dubiously.
“Classified. You have your secret projects and I have mine. Until I’m told to read you in, I’m afraid I can’t comment.”
