Protocol 7 (2 page)

“You’ll just kill yourself if you do. We’ll all die.”

The man didn’t answer. He just stared at him. After a long moment, Brad nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He backed into a corner and stretched his hands high over his head. Then he watched in mute horror as the man stripped his friend’s body, peeled off his own makeshift thermal suit, and switched clothes. The corpse of Robert Donnelley fit into one of the empty storage containers—one of the many that were going to be left behind.

Brad didn’t see the man’s face. It didn’t matter. He was too much in a state of disarray to even care.

When the man was fully clothed and Donnelley’s body was safely hidden away, he said, “You can put your hands down.” Parkinson lowered them with a silent sigh of relief and sat on a data cube, as far from the other man as he could. They did not speak again until the chopper arrived.

After carefully scanning the small outpost, the man quickly recognized what he had come for and opened a small box that contained a tiny book and a digital microchip. He quickly grabbed the contents and shoved them it into the pocket of his jacket. He knew that it would change everything. He needed to do this for his friend, even if it meant his life. The helicopter barely made it through the storm. It wallowed like an airborne rowboat piloted by a drunk, shoved and battered by the freezing wind. But it managed to touch down thirteen minutes after the stranger knocked on the outpost’s door—exactly on time.

The pilot didn’t check IDs—why bother? Donnelley and Parkinson were the only two humans in a five hundred-mile radius. With just two new passengers and so little to carry, the pilot was able to lift off at 12:56—two minutes early, despite the storm.

The trip to the evac station passed without incident. They did not speak to each other or the pilot. Shortly after they debarked, they went into separate rooms for processing and left on separate transports three hours later, returning to different parts of the United States. Brad did not see the other man leave; he heard much later that Robert Donnelley “disappeared” at some point along the daisy-chain of multiple connecting flights that were supposed to take him back to Roanoke, Virginia.

He didn’t care. All that mattered to Brad Parkinson was that he made it home to his wife and daughter.

And he never spoke of the incident to anyone. Ever.

Simon Fitzpatrick gazed into his tumbler of thirty-year-old scotch and thought about where he was, what he was doing—and, most important, what he was not doing.

“Jake,” he said to his constant companion. “You’re a son of a bitch.”

Jake regarded him with weary resignation. Clearly, he had heard it all before.

“But I knew that the day we met, didn’t I?” He tapped the glass against the polished surface of the burl wood side table and shook his head. “You’ve never been anything but honest with me.” He sighed. “No, what I actually have learned, after thirty years on the planet and ten years in this place, is something more: you have an excuse for being a son of a bitch—you have to deal with me every day. The rest of the world acts that way for fun.” Jake sighed again, making a show of his boredom. Then he hopped off the large ottoman that he had claimed as his own and padded into the kitchen to see if anyone had remembered to fill his food bowl. After a short pause he returned, looking disappointed but unsurprised.

Simon smoothed the fur on his Great Dane’s broad brow. The fire in the hearth was lovely; the scotch gave him an inner glow that was undeniable and terribly welcome. But it did nothing to relieve the cold, clenching anger that had been burning in his belly for days.

He couldn’t forget the look on the face of the UNED officer who delivered the news about his father’s fate. He had come to the door of the flat on a sunny day, hat in hand. “He was at his laboratory in…a classified location,” the officer told him, sounding oddly hesitant. “There was an accident. Unavoidable. Unexpected. And I’m afraid he sustained terminal injuries.”

Terminal injuries, Simon thought. The phrase kept repeating in his mind. As if he understood it. As if it meant something. Terminal injuries.

He had been promised details. He had been promised a swift “processing of the remains.” And then…nothing. Not a letter, not a package, nothing.

“Six weeks,” he said. “And not a word. They couldn’t care less about my father. Not Oxford University, not UNED, not even old friends I’ve known since elementary school.” He cupped the dog’s chin and lifted his eyes.

“Is he gone, Jake? Is he really dead?”

He got up and wandered through the apartment as if looking for an answer. It was a tidy three-bedroom flat not far from the university—a bedroom, a study, a guest room, and an octagonal dining room that looked out over a rolling green lawn. He had been here for five years, since his appointment as the department’s youngest full professor, and he loved it…but today, for the first time, it felt small, closed—confining.

He had to admit it—it meant nothing without his father.

He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and two fingers, trying to drive sleep away. He wasn’t ready to rest, not yet. He visited the bathroom long enough to splash water in his face and found himself staring at his own reflection: short auburn hair, a prominent chin and a strong, thin-lipped mouth that smiled easily—though not tonight. He was handsome enough, he supposed; he had heard women talking about him when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. It was his eyes they spoke about most often—deep, cobalt eyes that were staring back at him now with something like a challenge.

What are you going to do about it, he kept asking himself. What?

It was nearly midnight when the front door bell rang. Simon jumped in surprise and almost yelped, “What the hell?” at the empty air, then cursed himself for his nerves. Jake was even more disturbed by the noise; he barked like a hound from hell until Simon spoke to him sharply and put a comforting hand on his burly shoulder.

The deep bell sounded a second time, and a slightly hoarse, amused woman’s voice spoke to Simon from the empty air. It was his personal Artificial Intelligence unit—a disembodied voice that monitored most of his communication and acted as his personal assistant. During the past two decades, AIs had become commonplace and were intertwined with almost everyone’s life, in one way or another, much to Simon’s dismay.

“Jonathan Weiss,” the voice said. “An unexpected visit.”

Simon sat up straight. “Bollocks,” he said. “He’s in America.”

“In fact,” the voice said, “he is on the front porch and looking rather impatient.”

Simon jumped up and almost ran toward the apartment’s front door. “Shall I let him in?” the voice asked—always at his ear, right behind him, no matter what room he was in. He had grown so accustomed to her that he had named her after his mother—Fae.

“Just leave him alone!” he said. “Go away! I’ll handle it!”

“No need to be snippy,” the voice said.

“No need to be a wanker,” he retorted, half under his breath.

“I heard that!”

“Good!”

Simon pulled the huge front door open in one long sweep, still half-believing that his assistant had made an error. Although Fae was remotely wired through the entire house, Simon wondered if he should pull up the menu on the holographic screen that controlled the AI’s functions, just to be sure. AIs had come a long way since the first self-aware Artificial Intelligences had been born, but they still made mistakes. He had been trying to get a hold of Jonathan since the bad news had first arrived, but his old friend hadn’t bothered to respond.

Why would he come now, he wondered, without even calling? How had he come, given his position at the United National Enforcement Division and the current craziness of the Antarctic Quarantine? It just—

Jonathan Weiss stood like a granite statue on the porch, rain streaming onto his shoulders in buckets. He wore a no-nonsense snap-brim hat and a gray canvas raincoat that made him look like the stolid, solid operative he had been for years.

He really does look like something out of an American TV show, Simon thought as he regarded him. “Jonathan Weiss: CIA.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.

“Well, hello to you too, you limey bastard,” Jonathan growled, though he couldn’t keep himself from cracking a smile.

Simon grinned in response. “Shut up and come in.” Jonathan stepped forward and they embraced like the old friends they were. They had been roommates in college, close friends ever since. It was an unlikely friendship, but it had survived time and distance better than most marriages.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said into his friend’s shoulder. “You know that.”

“I know. I know.”

They finally let each other go and walked down the hall together toward the cozy sitting room.

“Welcome back, Mr. Weiss,” the disembodied voice said.

“Thank you, Fae,” Jonathan said.

“Shut up, Fae,” Simon said. He half-whispered to his friend: “I hate that machine, you know.”

Jonathan couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “She’s not a machine, Simon; she’s a fully sentient artificial intelligence. And if you hate her so much, why don’t you just turn her off?”

“What, and miss all the fun?”

“Indeed,” Fae said as they entered the sitting room. “Who would make all the decisions around here?”

“Who would make my life a living hell?”

“Exactly.”

“God, you two. Like an old married couple.”

Jake was waiting for them on the overstuffed couch; he greeted Jonathan like his own long-lost brother, and Simon was happy to indulge the two of them in a well-deserved reunion. Only then did Simon notice the carefully applied bandages on both of Jonathan’s hands.

“What happened there?” He nodded at Jonathan’s stiff, white-wrapped fingers.

“Frostbite,” Jonathan said shortly. “Not as bad as it looks.”

“Ah. I bet there’s a story behind that.”

Jonathan didn’t look at him. “I bet there is.”

Simon smiled and shrugged. He had heard answers like that from his old friend for years. After all, Jonathan had been working for intelligence agencies—first the CIA, now UNED—for most of his adult life. There were plenty of stories he couldn’t share, and Simon had accepted that long ago. He moved his exercise bag off the armchair and took a seat himself, stretching his long legs out in front as he waited.

Jake was finally content to share the huge leather couch with his companion, and Jonathan settled down, his hand on the dog’s side, idly stroking his brindle coat as the old friends chatted about the trip, their work, even the awful weather. After a few minutes, Simon stood and crossed to the decanter of ancient and wonderful scotch, poured a neat one for his best friend and topped off his own as well. It was one of the many things they shared: a deep love of the single malts, the older and mellower the better.

Jonathan winced as his damaged hand wrapped around the glass. They both chose to ignore it. Then he took a long, slow sip of the liquor and smiled as if the gods had blessed him. “My god, that’s good,” he said. “Really.”

Simon found himself wondering how long it had been since he had actually seen Jonathan in person. Eight months? Ten? The handsome guy hadn’t changed a bit, at least not externally: the short dark hair, the eyes so brown they were almost black, the square jaw and full mouth that made him look like an American hero to many, many women. But there was something about him—a weariness, a tendency to react just a half-second later than he should have—that was different. Different and disturbing.

“You better get to it,” Simon heard himself saying.

Jonathan pretended not to understand. “Get to what?”

Simon sighed. “It’s 2039, Jonathan. Amazing technology at your fingertips: cell phone implants, tele-presence, holo-files, even five-level encryption that your buddies back at UNED couldn’t break.”

Jonathan scowled. “Don’t count on that,” he said.

“You know what I mean. And still, you hop a flight or a train or a camel from…wherever the hell you were…and come here to see me in person. So, what’s up?” He sipped at the scotch again and raised his eyebrows, waiting.

Jonathan didn’t answer him directly. Instead he paused for a second and then raised his head to face one of the discretely mounted cameras in a dark corner of the room. “Fae,” he said, “do you remember that little trick I taught you last summer?”

“I think I know what you’re referring to, Jonathan,” Fae said in her deeply mellow voice. Simon had programmed her to sound just like Diana Rigg at the age of thirty in her Avengers heyday. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Procedure Kappa Alpha Poindexter, then,” Jonathan said.

Simon heard the oddest sound: a pop and a hummm that came from no direction and all directions at once, then quickly cycled up the audible sound-spectrum until it seemed to fade away…or fill the room. “What the hell?” he heard himself say for the second time that night.

“It’s an anti-eavesdropping widget I installed in Fae last time I was here,” Jonathan said. “Sends out a field of white noise that effectively kills every kind of bug, either live-feed or recording, within twenty meters. All they will hear is a muffled hiss until I tell it to go away.”

“Are you saying my home is bugged?” Simon was astonished. “Someone is listening to me?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Simon. Someone is always listening these days. You know that.”

“It’s that serious?”

Jonathan’s weariness showed through far more clearly now. He put the half-finished scotch on the end table and nodded. “Yeah. That serious.”

He stood up and paced to the fireplace, thinking deeply.

“I have a message for you,” he said.

Simon frowned. “From whom?”

“Your father.”

A long, cold moment passed. Simon felt a gulf opening between them. “My father is dead,” he said shortly, surprised at the anger in his own voice.

Jonathan, uncharacteristically hesitant, looked at a spot on the carpet midway between them. “Yes, that may be, but—”

“May be, Jonathan? May?” He leaned forward, doing his best to hold in his rage. “Oxford told me he was dead. The British Diplomatic Corps told me he was dead. Even your own beloved UNED told me he was dead. None of them will give me one bit of detail—how he died, when he died, even where—but they all agree on that one bloody fact: Oliver Fitzpatrick is dead. Or is that a lie, too?”