Buch lesen: «Agent Gemini»

Part One: Finding Trinity

Noah Caldwell had good news, for once, so he didn’t wait to make the daily report. When the brief codescramble of encryption was over, its whine through the earpiece enough to make him wince, he didn’t waste time on niceties, either. “Bingo, sir.”

“What?” Control sounded irritated, but that was usual. The past few months had been one irritation after another, and even Gibraltar Two getting off the ground with flying colors hadn’t sweetened the old man’s temper.

Caldwell himself was of the opinion that you had to be prepared to overcome obstacles to get near anything worth having, and it had served him well. It got him to his major’s acorn, at least, before he’d been put at Control’s disposal.

And he’d performed well. He was Control’s fireman now, rushing around the front to patch up holes. The chance for further advancement was very good—if he didn’t screw it up. “We have a security breach.”

“Where?” Control didn’t waste time getting angry. If it was bad news, Caldwell would own up to it soon enough.

Still, Caldwell reminded himself to step carefully. His heart hammered. He shifted his weight fractionally, looking out through the smoked glass of the office wall at the banks of computers, shuffling paper, glowing screens and uniformed people drinking overboiled coffee, collating, speaking into ugly but efficient headsets or phones. The only difference between this space and a telemarketer’s call center were the guards at the two doors, sidearms on display and their expressions granite-stony. “Beta Four.”

“Pocula Flats.” Control caught on, but not as quickly as he usually did. The old man must be tired—or worried. “That’s—”

“It’s our girl. The gamble paid off—now we have a location.” Caldwell kept his tone even. The old man didn’t like being interrupted, but would tolerate it in certain circumstances. If these didn’t qualify, none did.

“If she hasn’t already blown by now.” The cigarette-roughened words rasped, even through encryption and auditory filters.

So Noah sprang his little surprise. “She hasn’t. She didn’t get everything she came for.”

A long pause. Then careful, even and measured words. “How do you know?”

“Because that’s how the trap was set, sir. I’m requesting on-site assets and full authorization.”

Another short silence. There was a click—probably a lighter. “You have both. Don’t screw this up, Caldwell.” Control sounded weary, but also mildly pleased, which was a banner occasion in and of itself.

Agent Three, the crown jewel of the Gibraltar I program, was a high-priority recapture. And she had, after months of keeping just ahead of the game, committed her first mistake. All Caldwell had to do was bring her in alive, and his promotion, not to mention survival, was assured.

There were other reasons to bring her in, too. More...personal ones.

He still remembered her walking across a slick rooftop, gliding across ice like a panther, all fluid grace. Her wide dark eyes and her slim shoulders. He’d always liked blondes, and this one was a doozy.

“No, sir.” Noah Caldwell hung up, smiling.

* * *

The cereal aisle was by far the best. Bright boxes soothed her—all standardized sizes, arranged with a clear plan, bright sugary kids’ breakfasts just below adult eye-level, healthful blandness up top, the very bottom reserved for generics and other alternatives. The bags of generics in their bins were a little troublesome, you couldn’t quite get them perfect, but a little deviation was to be expected even in the most smoothly running system. Instead of overheating over a natural law, it was better to build some tolerances into every complex pattern.

Even, and especially, the ones inside your skull. It had taken her some time to arrive at that conclusion, but it worked wonderfully.

Trinity ran her finger down a line of General Mills products—their finest corn-syrup-laden offerings—tilted her blonde head and narrowed her dark eyes slightly. Constant Muzak, bland and inoffensive, seemed louder when the store was deserted; whether it was a function of selective attention or the absence of warm round human bodies to soak up stray sound waves was an open question, saved for when she needed calculations to stave off shutdown. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, outside a city slept or dozed, and inside this concrete cube a rogue United States government resource broke down cardboard with mechanical grace, slicing with a box knife then applying just the right amount of force to snap any remaining tape as the headache returned and her ribs ached.

She’d slightly miscalculated the fall onto the trailer of a passing semi to exit the Pocula Flats installation, and perhaps one of her ribs had cracked. The Gibraltar virus’s strengthening of her natural healing processes would soothe that pain in short order, but the headaches were growing more frequent and nothing eased them. With enhanced metabolism, pain medication was burned through extremely quickly unless she took a massive dose of opiates, and the concurrent risk of being incapacitated was unacceptable each time she ran the relevant equations inside her skull.

Trinity suppressed a useless sigh. You were supposed to work down the aisle and stock as you went, not break open boxes by size and waste time going back and forth, but Trinity had calculated any time lost backtracking was made up when she heaved the already-sorted cardboard into the binder, where it would be turned into a tightly wrapped brick of recyclable plant fiber. Perhaps the binder appreciated her thoroughness, and she was certain she had more in common with its metal jaws and brisk movements than she did with Tengermann, the night manager, or even with her fellow stockers.

Her hands moved without much conscious direction, making sure brightly colored cardboard blocks were brought flush to the edges, each shelf arranged for maximum aesthetic pleasure. It...irritated her, to work slowly enough the other stockers wouldn’t notice anything strange. East Felicitas, squatting like a surprise mushroom in the middle of parched heat-glimmering flats, drew from a labor pool large enough that a single woman with a disposable SSN could pass anonymously, and poor enough that most people were too exhausted to mind anyone else’s business, too occupied with their own. This Sav-Mor Supermarket on the west side was the perfect cover.

Military employees and families from the Pocula Flats base—an hour’s drive away, behind its razor wire and its two visible gatehouses—were the only reason this burg had swelled to its present size. Anyone who had the proper identification shopped at the PX; anyone who could afford it shopped on the north side of town, rarely venturing past the railroad tracks into the southwest quadrant, where the ranchero music blared, the street vendors clustered and the fields beyond the pavement held coyotes both human and otherwise at night.

It was Pocula Flats that Trinity was interested in. Not the training ground or the labyrinthine medical buildings, though the latter probably held something useful and was on her secondary list of objectives. She didn’t care for the historical markers scattered all through the area or the scars of past nuclear testing, either, beyond wondering if radioactive waste still lingered in the air and what the Gibraltar virus would do when faced with such a stressor.

No, it was the highly secure northern quadrant of the base she had fixed on, with its ancient brick buildings hosting basement warrens of ceiling-to-floor file cabinets. It was time for the second and last try; the process of elimination meant the files had to be here. If she wanted to answer any of the questions crowding her before they were rendered academic by her own demise, this was her only chance.

“Yo, Alice!” Eddie appeared at the end of the aisle, next to the instants—instant oatmeal, instant breakfast, Pop-Tarts and other easy foods created for convenience. They were her least favorite, so she did them last before she dragged the cardboard back and returned to repair the damage done daily to the baking aisle. “Goin’ on break.”

Why tell me? I’m not a manager. She nodded, a single efficient bob of her head. Her hair, scraped back in a ponytail as usual, felt like straw—she’d stripped the black dye from the indifferently trimmed mane just prior to beginning this job. All dye eventually flaked free, her hair not accepting the color as a normal woman’s would.

The patchy coverage such simple cosmetic applications afforded was protective coloration she may not need, since scrawny washed-out blondes were a dime a dozen. Camouflage was also afforded by the scratchy, stained red polyester vest and the jeans night stockers were allowed to wear. After all, nobody saw them except for blur-eyed insomniacs, addicts, or the occasional blinking, hair-mussed parent in desperate need of formula, diapers or an emergency bottle of baby Tylenol.

No customer took any notice of the muscle on Trinity’s slim frame or the sloppiness of some of her coworkers. She was an invisible appliance, an anonymous drone, and that made it safe.

“It’s cooling off out there,” Eddie persisted. “You wanna catch a smoke with me?”

I don’t smoke. Why is he asking? She spared him a single glance, from his shaggy head to his broad but softening shoulders, the top of his collared shirt undone and his sad, worn-down work sneakers splattered with rancid milk from the latest disaster back in the dairy section. He seemed to have more than a few problems with milk crates, racks and the eggs, as well.

His steady staring, his attention to her—they were both troubling. A surreptitious sniff gave her the news that he had showered before work and put on a dab of cologne—both unique occurrences. His pheromones held an edge—acrid maleness, nervous sweat, the metabolizing of the cigarettes he’d already smoked tonight—and a faint whiff of the microwaved turkey potpie he’d had before his shift warring with a cloud of burned coffee.

Every one of the stockers except Trinity drank gallons of boiled or sugar-laden, effervescent caffeine, and she had amused herself by calculating flow-through rates and uptake algorithms for a few days when she first started.

It helped keep her on track. Any calculation did. The deconstructing had slowed, or perhaps she was simply losing the acuity necessary to gauge its creeping progress. One more reason to hurry, but she wasn’t finished planning yet. And if the past few months had taught her anything, it was that planning was indispensable, even if the plan had to be altered as soon as it engaged with reality.

It was a military cliché, but it had the advantage of being completely true.

“I have to finish this.” She pitched it with care—just loud enough to be heard over the music, pleasant and neutral, her face stretching in the approximation of a smile most likely to seem unthreatening and regretful. “I’m behind.”

“You? You’re never behind.” A little forced, nervous laughter. “You sure you don’t want to? Just for a minute? It’s a nice night.”

His idea of a nice night was a hot, sterile breathlessness, with clouds of insects clustering street lamps and any mammal they could find in equal measure? The street lamps reminded them of the moon, probably, and the mammals were a rich food source, but understanding the insects did not manage to overcome the faintly sick unsteadiness Trinity was subject to when she thought of them.

Comprehension brought comfort, but no reduction of repugnance. The uneasiness was unwelcome and just another symptom of her decline.

“Gotta finish this.” She took care to inject just enough of a drawl into the words to match the regional-local speech patterns. “Maybe later.”

A rough raw pink of disappointment, like seeping, undercooked beef, spread through Eddie’s scent. “Okay.” He dawdled a little, but she went to work facing the instant oatmeals. He finally turned and plodded away. His chinos had a stain on the left side of the seat, shaped almost exactly like Florida.

Hopefully, it was coffee.

He was paying too much attention to her. She should quit here. But sitting in the apartment with nothing to calculate unless she turned the television on and began free-associating would only lead to...disturbances, inside her head or the rest of her body. Ones she couldn’t pinpoint, even with the viral load she carried giving her vastly heightened control over autonomics and a dose of high-grade neuroplasticity.

The virus. A strange sensation rippled down her back. She was coping, and she had tied off every loose end she could. She was hiding successfully and about to make her third and final run to find the records. Before she deteriorated completely, she would at least know who she was. Or had been, before the Gibraltar virus and the induction procedure erased everything but faint, misleading cortical ghosts.

For a moment white light filled her head, the raw scrape of a throat screamed dry, restraints at wrists, ankles, waist, elbows, knees—

Stop. Remembering the induction was quite useless. Control yourself. Her sweat glands opened slightly. It took more effort than she liked to bring the various processes into harmony again. Homeostasis was such a delicate, difficult balance.

How did the uninfected handle such spikes in hormones, in internal activity, in sensation? How had she handled them before the induction? It was difficult to imagine when you had no memory for comparison.

Focus on the task at hand, Trinity. She redirected her attention, breathing deeply, and found she had placed a box of strawberry oatmeal in with the blueberry. The boxes were the same size, true, but it was a disturbing lapse, a bloodred blot in the middle of the blue.

She stood for a few moments, trembling in her serviceable hiking boots, before her hands moved to right it, placing the offending box with its own kind.

It was no use. She couldn’t ignore the signs. Deconstruction was proceeding at its own insidious pace.

I am, she thought grimly, running out of time.

* * *

It was a simmering Tucson afternoon, the kind that should be spent inside with air-conditioning and a cold beer while you watched overgrown steroid-fed jackholes run into each other for your amusement on a screen you paid too much for. Preferably with some slow-cooked barbecue at the end of the day, and your girl cuddled against you on the couch while you watched sitcoms afterward. The good old American dream—cable, cholesterol and circuses.

Hold that thought, Gibraltar Agent Eight—or Cal, as he preferred, even though it wasn’t any closer to the name he was born with—told himself and pretended to stumble as they shoved him into an alley.

Three men against an agent was close to a cakewalk. Even when the agent was handcuffed. Knee to the first one’s groin, stamping down along the shin with a heavy boot-toe—steel-toed Docs were still the best—driving himself aside, that one’s got a knife, dammit, shoulder into the knife man’s stomach and skin tearing as he yanked his right hand free.

If you didn’t mind losing a little flesh, handcuffs came right off. Zip ties were laughably easy if you had some freedom of movement, so was duct tape, but cuffs always meant blood loss. The knife skittered away, fetching up under a Dumpster; Cal’s bleeding hand snapped up and there was a crunch as the nasal promontory broke, driving into the brain.

Oops. Steady on, Cal. Need one for questioning. Left hand whipping out, fingers folded through the now-free right-hand cuff to brace it, a strike to the third one’s throat.

These were standard-issue goons, probably NSA fieldhoppers though their watches were wrong, in suits with the wrong wingtips for urban camouflage and sidearms they didn’t dare use out in public. He’d waved himself like a red rag in front of them, and they’d leaped to snap the cuffs on him and get him off the street, probably to hood and zip-tie him while they called for backup.

Idiots. Getting all excited and moving to take him even though they probably had orders to call for backup first. But you got high-testosterone boys in a group, and their functional efficiency went into the basement once there was a bit of caveman exertion in sight.

Textbook closed-space combat, blond hair flopping a little in Cal’s face since he’d needed to grow it out a bit for camouflage. Really, with the enhanced strength and speed, it was hardly fair.

Fair was for idealists, not survivors. A greenstick crack as he took out the first one’s knee, spilling him on the alley floor, and the third was quietly choking. Big, bullish, brawny boys, probably ruthless and used to winning against defenseless civilians.

Definitely not used to fighting an agent.

A hollow bong—the third had kicked a Dumpster, the body scrabbling for breath. Cal sighed, stripped the still-twitching corpse—Number Two—of its gun and wallet, spent a few minutes making Number Three a little more comfortable and a little less visible from the street-mouth, then went back to the first. He got a hand over the man’s mouth just as shock loosened its grip enough to permit screaming, got that gun away and examined the man critically. A real corn-fed wonder with a high and tight, little blue eyes way too close together, and he smelled like chili. The sweet-roasted edge of incipient diabetes lay under the taco-and-beans funk.

Thirty-five or thereabouts. Not too old for fieldwork, but metabolism starting to slow down. Still in good shape but had too much rye mash last night. That’s alcohol metabolizing. A kaleidoscope of smell and sense impression inside his head. Sometimes Cal wondered how he’d ever got along without the invaders in his bloodstream, spinning all his dials up to eleven. The initial illness had been goddamn uncomfortable—that was true enough—but the end result was better muscular efficiency, flexibility, problem solving and a host of other benefits.

It was a pity he hadn’t come out of it with, say, Reese’s ability to plan instead of what the eggheads called “tactical flexibility.” But you made do with what you had, and what he had right now was a man to question.

“Hi,” Cal said softly, politely. No use in shouting. “Let’s keep this simple, okay? I ask questions. You tell the truth, you live.”

His sides heaving, his eyes white-ringed, Number One still had the remarkable presence of mind to look over Cal’s shoulder, probably thinking he’d get some help if he could choke out a yell. Cal sighed, shook his head, blue eyes darkening a little. “You want broken ribs, too? Come on, man. You’ve had a hard day. Just tell me what I want to know.”

“What?” Number One choked, his voice high and squeaky. Maybe fear, maybe pain, both were pouring off him in waves. Cal’s right hand smarted—the flesh was already sealing up. He might scar, despite the virus jacking healing processes into hyperspeed.

Wouldn’t that be interesting. The longer he walked around with the swarmies in his bloodstream, the more interesting things kept cropping up. Like the headaches. “What’s your initials, fella?” Cal dug at the man’s coat, found the badge holder and flipped it open. It looked legit, true, but looks weren’t everything. “Aw, come on. You’re not FBI. Your socks are all wrong. You’re not NSA, either, those watches are outside your pay grade.”

“In-indep-pendent,” the man stuttered, and Cal’s nape roughened with gooseflesh. “B-b-b-bait.”

Uh-oh. Independent contractors, working in a major American city. Deniability and tactical flexibility in one nasty package, and getting the authorization to let them do anything domestic was a maze of paperwork. Someone was very invested in this. “Huh. That makes you collateral, then, doesn’t it.” Still nice and level. His entire back was crawling now. If you’re bait, sonny boy, I’m a lot closer than I think. Like all good news, though, it had a lead lining.

Because bait meant trapjaws, too, nice and shiny and jagged, looking to close on him.

Cal glanced up at the alley sides and the slice of blue sky he could see between two six-story buildings, then back at the street, where a golden flood of pure-D Arizona sunshine was busy cooking everything stupid enough to try moving during the middle of the day. He wasn’t sweating too much—temperature differences were a lot less likely to affect him now—and it took a second to throttle back the adrenaline dump in his bloodstream, everything revving down so he could think without the chemical soup of fight-or-flight fogging his mental processes. “Bait, huh?”

“Don’t k-k-kill me,” the man whispered. “OhGod, don’t kill me, dontkillme please—”

You get this close to me and survive, they’ll kill you. Or make you wish you were dead in debriefing. Cal shrugged easily, every nerve screaming Get the hell out of here, man, what are you doing waiting around? “You’re not here for me.” Logical enough to make even Reese proud.

“G-g-girl.” Number One flapped his left hand, and Cal’s fingers were there, reaching under the suit jacket cuff to feel tape and paper. “B-b-blonde g-g-girl.”

He yanked on it, and the photo—taped to the shirtsleeve underneath for easy reference and sweat proofing—crackled against his palm. “A girl, huh? Didn’t anyone tell you she had a boyfriend already?” He grinned easily, and Number One’s mouth fell open as he cowered. Whatever was on Cal’s face at that moment must not have been pretty.

It didn’t feel pretty from the inside, either. A cold breath against his nape again warned him he was running out of time and room. Put him down. It’s kinder than what they’ll do.

Besides, jackholes like this had killed Tracy. His hands ached with the urge, ached further with the loss of skin, just two short moves and it would all be over. He could even make it painless, if he wanted to.

One hundred and twenty seconds later, Cal peered down from the roof above, the right-hand cuff already open and the irritating metal bracelets forgotten, as black SUVs clustered the alley mouth. More big brawny goons clotted the small space below, bundling up the two bodies and ushering Number One toward a quick ride to debriefing and maybe liquidation.

It would have been better to just erase the man, Cal told himself again.

Tracy’s voice, soft and kind. You’re not as bad as you think you are, you know.

Except Tracy was dead now, without ever knowing the truth: that Cal would be just as bad as necessary to get the job done. Right now, his job was finding another woman before these yahoos did. A woman who smelled like blueberry pie and sweetness, a woman who had neatly rescued Reese’s girl Holly and then saved all their collective bacon, before vanishing.

A woman like that deserved some looking after.

More independent contractors, taking their orders from someone in government. If he watched closely enough, he might get a clue.

Hang on, what’s that? He breathed softly, ignoring the sun beating on his back. A tall figure, dark hair not military cut but the rigidity of bearing suggesting some bootcamp, moving unhurried through the frenzy of activity. They’d probably take everything in the Dumpster in for scanning and analyzing, as well. Hello, sir, who are you?

No time to introduce himself to this interesting new player on the scene, even if he had the urge. There was a thopping of chopper blades, and Cal ran lightly across the rooftop, tar softening under his boot soles. It took a special kind of sliding to keep your speed across footing like this—you were liable to throw your knee out if you didn’t do it right. By the time the helicopter arrived and began its search pattern, he was already in the car, almost running a stop sign the way they did down here, just slowing to a California roll with the AC blasting and the steering wheel hot enough to cook his fingers. A police scanner set under the dash crackled and burbled softly, and he had the picture from the guy’s sleeve propped over the RPM gauge.

It was a woman with big dark eyes, her blond hair pulled too tightly back and little gold hoops winking in her ears. Unsmiling, she stared directly into the camera as if it was a mug shot, and the shape of her cheekbones was sweet enough to make any man’s heart pound. She was too thin, the architecture of her neck clearly visible and her lush mouth pulled tight with what had to be hunger.

The scanner squawked—they were using some of the local resources, which meant he could infiltrate and hop one step ahead of them, again. It also meant they were very, very close to the prize, and getting closer all the time.

Cal let out a soft breath, not quite a whistle, and rolled his window up since the AC had finally stopped blowing more heat into the car and started doing what it was supposed to.

Now the only problem was getting to the girl before they did.

* * *

There was someone in her aisle. Trinity suppressed a scratching feeling behind her breastbone—it was not rational to be irritated at a bundled-up figure who had shuffled in from outside to stand in front of the tuna-fish shelves, staring at the cans as if the fate of the world depended on picking the right constellation of ocean trash and dolphin meat.

Homeless. Female. Thirty-five or a little older. The scent—ripe and almost rank, a woman who tried unsuccessfully to keep herself clean against great odds—rode a draft of chilly air, and Trinity’s head cocked slightly. It was far too warm outside for the bulky parka and knit cap the woman wore, not to mention the layers of sweatpants tucked into high-laced hiking boots caked with sand and quite possibly some animal scat. The boots were also much more worn than Trinity’s and had been mended with duct tape.

Trinity dropped the box of pickled asparagus—the people on this patch of dusty earth seemed to crave a truly prodigious amount of the things—just hard enough to make a noise, but not hard enough to crack any of the jars.