Code Zero (36 page)

“Bill—?” she asked, her voice small.

“Yeah, babe?”

“What will happen to me if they really arrest me?”

He didn’t answer. Not at first. Long moments drifted past them like burning embers.

“We’ll think of something,” he said. It sounded weak.

“If they find out,” she said, her voice even smaller, “we’ll never see each other again.”

Collins put a smile on his face. Bliss wanted to believe that it was real.

“Sure we will,” he said. “We’ll find a way.”

And then he took her wineglass and set it on the night table next to his. Then he took her in his arms and they fell together onto the tangled sheets.

When Bliss arrived at the Hangar the following morning, Aunt Sallie and Gus Dietrich stood beside her workstation. Their eyes were ice cold. Harsh. Angry and unforgiving.

Before Bliss could say a word, Dietrich tossed a pair of handcuffs onto her desk.

Chapter Fifty-five

Fulton Street Line

Near Euclid Avenue Station

Brooklyn, New York

Sunday, August 31, 2:04 p.m.

We moved through darkness that had never seen sunlight or felt rain. Our footsteps sounded strangely muffled. With the lights off we used night-vision goggles, which painted everything in eerie shades of green and gray.

For the first hundred yards we saw nothing. Not a rat, not even a cockroach.

The original members of Echo each carried a BAMS unit clipped onto their shoulder straps. Ivan kept checking his, murmuring the comforting “Green” every few dozen yards.

We ran around puddles and long steel rails, guns in hand. Ivan was on point, leading the way with a combat shotgun fitted with a heavy drum magazine. Bunny had an identical shotgun. Lydia had our backs. I knew the newbies knew their jobs, but they didn’t yet know ours, and I needed someone I could trust without supervision.

Suddenly, Ivan stopped with his fist raised, the universal signal to stop.

We stopped.

He unclenched his fist and pointed to something attached to a pillar. A small high-tech camera with a burning red eye.

I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Bug.”

“With you, Cowboy.”

“What do you know about this?” I tilted my helmet cam toward the device on the wall.

“It’s not regulation,” he said.

I snapped my fingers. “Green Giant.”

Bunny moved past me, pulling a small scanner from a pocket. He reached up and swept it past the camera. “It’s not a bomb,” he said, then pressed a button to switch the nature of the scanner. “Not sending a signal. Whatever it is, it’s not doing anything.”

“Getting the scanner feed,” said Bug. “Wow, that’s a nifty toy. Mucho expensive and it should not be there. Since company policy is that we don’t like coincidences, my best guess is that it was put there by our bad guys.”

“Is it safe to touch?” I asked, stepping up beside Bunny.

“Yeah. It’s just a camera.”

I reached up and punched it with the side of my fist. Very damn hard. “Fuck it.”

We moved on. There were more cameras. Bunny scanned each one, and once the bomb detector gave a green light, he smashed them.

“That’s like eight thousand dollars a pop,” said Bug.

“Not anymore,” said Bunny.

We kept going, running through darkness as quickly and quietly as we could.

Then we crossed a line.

It wasn’t something you could define, nor was it an actual line on the ground. But within the space of a few steps the world suddenly changed. It no longer felt like we were running through an empty tunnel toward something. No, all at once it felt like were
in
something.

Something ugly.

Something wrong.

That fast, Ivan’s pace slowed from a careful run to a wary walk.

I could see it in his body language, in the tightening of his shoulders, the hunch of his back as if following a primitive instinct to shield his vitals against an unseen claw.

We slowed, too.

And then Ivan held up a fist again.

We froze. Nobody was stupid enough to ask what was wrong or if Ivan actually saw anything. Even the newbies knew better than that. In that polluted darkness we stood as still as statues in some lost and forgotten tomb of ancient warriors.

Then Bunny raised his BAMS unit and showed me the display. The warning light was no longer green. Now it was a faint orange. There was something in the air and I didn’t need the digital display to tell me what it was.

Seif-al-din.

Although the pathogen was a serum transfer, traces of it could be carried in moist air. Not enough to infect on inhalation but enough to scare the living shit out of me.

Something ahead of us moved. It was a soft step. Faint, dragging. Around the bend in the tunnel. Coming our way.

I signaled the others to hold their positions as I crept forward to stand with Ivan. We stood shoulder to shoulder in the center of the tracks, guns up and out. The sound grew louder. A shuffling step, a scrape of rubber soles on the wet concrete. Footsteps without emphasis. Listless. The way a dazed and injured person walks.

The figure moved around the bend in the tunnel and into our line of sight. Behind me I heard Noah whisper something.

“Jeez, it’s one of our boys. Good … maybe they have everything contained.”

The figure was dressed in full SWAT gear. Limb pads and body armor, a helmet, weapons. Sergeant’s stripes.

No mask, though.

That was gone.

Beside me Ivan gagged. “Oh … balls…”

Behind me I heard a sharp intake of breath. Maybe Noah, maybe one of the others. The SWAT sergeant moved toward us without haste. Limping, dragging one foot. He stopped for just a moment, head coming up, eyes seeming to flare with green light because of the night-vision distortion. But I knew that the SWAT man could not see us. And it wasn’t because the tunnel was so dark.

You need eyes to see.

He had none.

No eyes.

No nose.

No lips.

All we could see was raw and ragged ends of muscle and chipped edges of white bone.

There was no way this person could still be alive. His throat had been savaged, his clothes were drenched with blood that was as black as oil in the green night-vision light. I thought that it might somehow be easier for me because I’d seen this before. The walking dead, the violation and perversion of the body that was the hallmark of the
seif-al-din
pathogen. I’d fought these walkers before. Fought them with guns and knives and my own hands. I believed that having defeated this horror before that I was somehow immune to the soul-tearing sight of it again. That the reality of it would be less real to someone like me.

That’s hubris. That’s the kind of thinking that only a fool can manage and I hated myself for my blindness and my weakness.

The man—the wreck of what had been a man—opened its jaws and from between rows of broken teeth he uttered a moan of such aching and indescribable hunger that it made me want to weep. Or scream.

Instead, I pointed my gun at his ruined face and pulled the trigger.

God help us all.

Chapter Fifty-six

Grand Hyatt Hotel

109 East Forty-second Street

New York City

Sunday, August 31, 2:06 p.m.

He checked into the hotel under the name Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. It was a nice choice, Monk thought. Goldsmith had co-created the very first interactive electronic game—a missile simulator—back in 1947. One of Mother Night’s little jokes.

Monk took the elevator to the thirteenth floor and entered his room. A gift basket stood on the table by the window. Wine, fruit, cheese, chocolate. And at the bottom a plastic pill case filled with the right goodies, and also keycards for three other rooms at the hotel. Those rooms were booked for Estle Ray Mann, Goldsmith’s partner for the missile game; Alan Turing, inventor of the first computer chess game, also in 1947; and his colleague Dietrich Prinz.

Each room had an identical suitcase and bag of golf clubs. In each golf bag was a twin—or a sister, as Monk viewed it—of his darling Olga. The suitcases also contained handguns and explosives. Better to be prepared for all eventualities.

He unwrapped a chocolate bar, bit a piece, and sat down to wait for Mother Night’s call.

“Hope it won’t be too long,” he said to Olga’s sister.

Interlude Fifteen

United States District Court

Southern District of New York

500 Pearl Street

New York, New York

Two Years Ago

Her lawyers told her to wear a pretty suit and show a little leg, maybe a hint of cleavage. Bliss spent a lot of time on her makeup, and when she stepped into the courtroom she was sure that no one even noticed the handcuffs. They were looking at the prettiest woman in the room, and that was a tactic. It was, the lawyer assured her, the last card they had left to play.

The judge had spent a lot of time during the trial looking at Artemisia Bliss’s legs. The judge was a well-known hound dog and had a useful track record in light sentencing for pretty women.

She smiled at him—not too overt a flirtation, of course—as she sat down at the defense table. Her lawyers—both attractive women—sat on either side of her. They, too, were showing a little skin. Skirts and tailored jackets. Probably push-up bras, too. Anything that would work.

Bliss was well aware that nothing much else had worked so far.

Eighteen separate charges had been brought against her. Her lawyers had gotten four of them tossed on technicalities and the jury had decided in her favor on six more. That left eight in place, and the jury didn’t let her slide on those. Standing there, listening to the foreman delivering eight guilty verdicts, was the toughest thing Bliss had ever done. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. Before that day she’d been certain that it wasn’t possible to feel more completely vulnerable and afraid than she already had. Through the booking phase, that awful first night in jail, the arraignment before a grand jury, the months in federal custody, the endless nights in jail where predators abounded and her looks and breeding were no protection at all. Feeling abandoned by Bill Collins, who could not risk even the most tenuous connection to her. The trial itself, burning away days, then weeks, and finally two months of her life.

And the endless deliberation. Four and a half days of it.

Guilty of cybercrimes.

Guilty of wire fraud.

Guilty of unauthorized access to protected computers. Notably those belonging to federal agencies.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Including the big one. Guilty of human rights violations.

That was not actually true. Not as such. But she had copied all of the information in the computer systems of the Jakoby twins and their father, Cyrus. The elder Jakoby had devised a number of pathogens designed to target different ethnic groups. Her theft of that science painted her with the same brush. No amount of argument from her lawyers could convince a jury that any innocent person would want the formulae for ethnic genocide for any reason other than to use or resell it.

Hence the conspiracy charges for which she was convicted.

Which brought her to today.

The sentencing.

Her looks and the judge’s poor personal judgment when it came to women. One card left to play.

The judge sat behind his bench and listened to prosecution and defense make their elaborate arguments for and against a harsh sentence. Bliss thought her lawyers were particularly eloquent, and the judge even smiled as he watched the younger of the two attorneys jiggle her way to the lectern. The cuffs had been removed before the proceedings began.

The judge then turned to Bliss.

“Would the accused like to make a statement?”

“Yes, your honor,” said Bliss, rising slowly to her feet. Exactly as she had been coached.

He gestured for her to continue.

“Your honor,” began Bliss, “I understand the gravity and consequences of what I did. I really do. But I meant no harm. I’ve been a loyal and dedicated member of the
team
since its inception.” It had been agreed by all parties that the DMS would never be named and would instead be referred to as the “team.” “I’ve done everything I could to help strengthen our country against all threats.” Her use of
our
was deliberate and she leaned on it ever so slightly. “Everything I’ve done since joining the team was to make sure that we were prepared for anything that could pose a threat to us. Collecting and collating data, analyzing it, disseminating it to the proper groups within the team was my only concern. Everything else was part of that goal. Everything. I love our country. And I want to continue to serve it and to help protect the American people.” She paused and gave him a brave smile. “Thank you.”

There was a frown on the judge’s face. Was it doubt about the convictions? Was it doubt about whatever sentence he’d already decided before today? As she sat down, each of her attorneys took one of her hands. When she cut a look at the prosecutors, they looked worried.

The judge was silent for a long time, his lips pursed, chin sunk on his chest. Finally, he looked at Bliss and nodded.

“Very well,” he said. “Bearing in mind your record, the evidence, and the remarks made here this morning, I am prepared to pronounce sentence.”

He cited the verdicts and the applicable laws and statutes.

Then he smiled at her. “Dr. Bliss, you are a very attractive and charming woman. You are a brilliant scientist and perhaps one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Your skills and your potential are, as has been pointed out, a powerful weapon capable of doing great good for the American people in these troubled times.”

Bliss brightened, and both of the hands holding hers tightened.

“However,” said the judge, “when a person puts self-interest in front of patriotism, and personal gain before the general welfare, then that person has thrown away any grace or consideration she might otherwise have.”