The Prisoner (11 page)

Leaving behind the fat fields, they entered a wide tunnel, mostly clear and with narrow sidewalks at either side, its air thick with the rancid stench. After ten minutes of marching
single file, their oilskins rubbing against the brickwork, they reached a narrow side tunnel. Laurel’s eyes watered and her throat felt raw from repeated retching. Runny fat had invaded her waders, and her toes squelched in warm slime.

Suddenly, six feet ahead of her, a torrent of light spilled into the passage after a protracted groan of rusty hinges. A blond man in a blinding white lab coat over a blue shirt and tie leaned into the tunnel, wrinkled his nose, and grinned as if greeting a favorite aunt.

“Hello! I’m Dr. Carpenter. What took you so long?”

20:26

It had to happen one day. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Nikola Masek drew out a crumpled bag, rummaged inside, and popped a candy in his mouth. He’d asked his assistant to park outside the hibernation facility instead of in the underground parking lots. Although his specially shielded cell phone would work inside the dead zone, the sophisticated equipment in the van Nikola used as a mobile ops center wouldn’t. After climbing on foot from the parking lot’s upper section, he ambled across a wide belt of paved lots surrounding the station toward an unmarked dark-green van waiting at the curb of an access road circling the hibernation facility. When local authorities redesigned the northern section of Washington, D.C., the intersection of three highways had left a triangular plot of land—an ideal place for the hibernation station. Its location had eased traffic congestion. Everybody knew the snow-white monoliths were secure and harmless to people outside, but millions of commuters passed through the area as swiftly as possible or found another route.

Nikola sucked on the candy. And yet total security existed only in the minds of politicians and other amateurs. Any castle could be breached, any safe busted, any network hacked. Only fools assumed security was a synonym for safety. Security bought time. But time, like any other commodity, could be purchased by others. In security, it usually meant enlisting someone inside to supply a shortcut. Someone had bought some expensive time.

A middle-aged Japanese couple stepped out of an idling cab on the access road and strolled toward the building. Nikola stopped and brushed the sole of his loafer over the dense grass growing in the interstices between the flagstones. He turned slowly around to face the vast white bulk of the sugar cube—the nickname common folk used for the hibernation stations. The same common folk who would assume that whoever planted the grass, probably at great expense, had intended to beautify an otherwise stark landscape. Nothing could be further from the truth. The grass was needed.

The sugar cube was surrounded by two hundred yards of square paving stones measuring thirty by thirty inches each, with a four-inch strip between them where the lush grass grew. The flagstones rested on a bed of fine-grained sand, compacted without mortar or any other binding. Below the sand, a network of polymer fiber optics detected the slightest change in the weight of each flagstone. Nikola recalled a showy experiment by the suppliers of the network. A technician had dropped a Ping-Pong ball onto a slab and grinned when a loudspeaker wired to a sensor blared:
tap … tap … tap, tap-tap-tap-tap
as the ball bounced.

The Japanese couple neared the sugar cube and stopped a few feet away, perhaps afraid to draw any closer in case the white expanse sucked them in. They looked around.
Now you’re wondering if someone is watching you
. No cameras in sight.
They’re not; there’s no need
. A computer had determined their number, weight, and direction of movement from the moment they stepped on the flagstones. If, instead of individuals, a car or truck had tried to cross over, every other slab would have sunk twelve inches. The vehicle would
be stuck within a few feet. And within a couple of minutes, a DHS Fast Deployment Unit would have surrounded the intruders.

The woman fiddled with a tiny video camera, perhaps wanting to capture a souvenir. No chance. Beneath the polymer epidermis of the cube lay two feet of hardened concrete and, sandwiched between inner and outer surfaces, protective copper shielding to make the building an information black hole. In addition, strong electromagnetic pulses would prevent the gadget’s operation. Only specially shielded equipment would work within five hundred yards of the station.

When Hypnos designed the first hibernation complex, there was a discussion about building a perimeter protection fence. A stupid discussion, since all access was through underground roads and there was nothing to protect on the surface. So why build stations close to city centers? Why not in the wilds or underground? Elementary, my dear idiot: People forgot networks like sewers and other utilities that lay hidden beneath the city streets. Also, people needed reminders of reality and permission to see and touch—like the Japanese couple—to gather fodder for nightmares. Masek eyed the tourists. The woman drew closer to the wall and ran a hand over the white surface—a six-inch hardened polymer without openings, joints, or cracks. He could almost read her thoughts.
You’re thinking of the difference a few inches can make. Yes, my dear, a few critical inches is the difference between being in or out. Out or dead
.

Enjoying the blush of a sinking sun, Nikola dug his hands in his trouser pockets, sucked the sweet, and strolled toward his mobile control center.

“These are the fugitives’ numbers.” Nikola Masek drew a thin memory card from his top pocket and deposited it in Dennis Nolan’s outstretched hand.

He squeezed between the back of Dennis’s swivel chair and the wall of the van to a bucket seat in the corner, wedged between two racks of equipment, and flopped down to massage his knees. Vlad Kosmerl, the Washington station head
of security, had been most helpful; not that he could have done otherwise without risking a long dip in a tank. After supplying the files Nikola needed, he’d agreed to seal the Washington sugar cube. Fear worked wonders. Until he recaptured the fugitives, all personnel would remain in the building. Relatives had been informed of confidential security exercises with a generous compensation in overtime pay. He doubted anyone would have had the chutzpah to gossip about the breakout, but it was safer to remove the temptation.

The call from the DHS requesting that he drop everything to await instructions had arrived shortly before six-thirty. He’d planned on a light supper followed by a spell of bliss at the tiny Temple Theater. Claus Holtermann’s rendition of Sophocles’
Antigone
promised to be a treat, in particular Walter Lindt’s interpretation of Tiresias, the blind prophet.
Holtermann’s work doesn’t look for empathy from its audience; its demand is actually greater, to completely surrender to its power and to experience it not as a sophisticated theatergoer but as a wholly immersed witness
, had raved Susan Lamarck, the
Washington Times’s
critic.

When Odelle Marino’s call came through, Nikola had stifled a smile at the uncanny coincidence. Her cry for help involved a wholly immersed witness who had suddenly surfaced. He’d demanded total authority over the DHS’s awesome resources and she’d agreed. Perhaps a tad too quickly.

When his eyes adjusted to the van’s dim interior, he peered at Dennis’s computer screen. The freckled young man’s fingers flew over the keyboard, interrogating wireless networks and scouring through millions of signatures bouncing off cellular repeaters. Fear was a powerful motivator and an excellent tool of persuasion, but it didn’t breed loyalty. That feeling needed to be fostered by admiration, gratitude, or a combination of both.

A few years back Dennis had landed in a tight spot when he’d hacked into one of the hardest networks in the land. He’d slipped a program into his chosen server farm like a lover seducing a virgin—a little at a time. Spaced every few hours, over days or even weeks, Dennis dripped lines of code, innocently
disguised inside standard forms or routine queries. The lines would assemble in the uncharted space between memory sectors until triggered. Then the program would run, take over the network, and flash
Gotcha!
on hundreds or thousands of screens before disappearing without a trace. The NSA classed those messing about with systems as white hats or black hats: hackers or crackers. Both used similar tools, but their goals were as different as the color of their virtual headgear. Hackers never caused damage or tried to retrieve data, restricted or not. Rather, they would highlight the weaknesses of a system. On the other hand, crackers sought mayhem by crashing systems or releasing viruses. The experts agreed on this one: white hat, a prankster.

Eventually people make mistakes, usually triggered by overconfidence or sloppiness. In Dennis’s case, his nemesis had been fatigue: The boy had fallen asleep while running one of his programs, only to be rudely awakened by a security squad. Nikola agreed the hacker had caused no real harm, but he was dangerous and in need of a lesson. After a couple of days in a suitable environment, cunningly prepared to scare his pants off, Dennis had repented and moved in as Nikola’s assistant. Within a short time, mentor and apprentice had fused brains and talents into a formidable tracking machine. Ten years had passed, but it seemed like only yesterday that Masek had descended into the police dungeons cloaked as a redeeming angel to spirit Dennis toward the light.

“Weak signals.”

Masek snapped from his reverie. “You got them?”

“Of course.”

Years before, cajoling the folks at Hypnos had taken deft footwork, but Nikola had managed to have them hide a microchip in the neck sensors of the inmates, broadcasting a unique signature.
Afraid the inmates will thaw and take a powder? When pigs fly
. That had been what Vinson Duran, Hypnos’s head honcho, had said. Well, pigs were definitely airborne, but not for long.

“Where?” Nikola slouched forward and examined the map spreading over Dennis’s plasma screen.

“Almost four miles away. Here.” He pointed to a tiny group of flashing dots. He touched the spot and the image zoomed.

“What’s there?” Nikola asked.

“Commercial tanks. Nyx Corporation.”

Nikola nodded. It made sense. Nyx had the equipment and knowledge to revive Russo. His respect for whoever had planned the escape increased a notch.

“Stationary?”

Dennis poked at the screen again. Three dots flashed intermittently over the same spot. “Yup.”

So, the three pigs were holed up at Nyx. Lukas Hurley, the controller, would be trying to flee the country. Nikola had no way of tracking him. He carried no sensor, but Dennis had wired Lukas’s holograph and biometric data to every police station and border crossing. Good luck.

“They got there through the sewers?”

The image on the screen zoomed back, and a network of colored lines superimposed themselves. “There’s a main line running under their building. The folks from Nyx manage their own effluents. No need for their own spur.” There was a hint of criticism in Dennis’s tone, and Nikola had to agree. Hypnos’s design to manage their sewage in a remote treatment plant was a weak link. A flaw that someone had used with remarkable success.

Nikola sighed.
When it is obvious the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps
. Regardless of the millennia, Confucius’s words held true. Worrying didn’t return bolted horses, or pigs, back to the stables. Action did.

“Close shop and let’s drive over to Nyx. Call the DHS and have them send muscle to meet us there in fifteen minutes.”

21:45

Her skin felt defiled beyond recovery, and no amount of scrubbing altered the feeling. After a long time under the shower’s high-pressure jets, rubbing handfuls of bactericidal gel into every inch of her body Laurel could reach, it still felt the same. She reamed her ears, blew her nose, inserted soapy fingers into her anus and vagina, and rubbed between her toes, but the sensation persisted. The surface muck had run away in gushes of brown liquid, eddying around the shower’s drain, but the tank’s fluid had leached into her skin, clogging her pores. Lanolin and nutrients should have felt like body lotion, but they didn’t. Laurel took a deep breath. At least the steam had the gel’s piney tang. In her nose and ears, membranes clung to memories of cold jelly. And to think she’d been in the fluid only a few minutes. … How would skin feel after marinating for years? She leaned a hand on the polymer wall of the shower cubicle, doubled over, and retched for the umpteenth time. Then she wrapped her arms around her waist, turned her face to the full blast of the shower, and rocked.