Face, The (31 page)

Sarah

I
ignore Dr. Mewton’s announcement and go to my desk in the ops room, where I can concentrate on the work of finding my aunt. Now that the sun is rising, I type in coordinates to direct another keyhole satellite to shoot photos of the Spanish coastline, desperately trying to find some clue—a car, a boat, a convoy—that might tell us something about where the invaders have taken Aunt Renee. Judson has been busy at his computer, too, sending inquiries to officers in the field and searching the Web for any leads on who might have led last night’s attack.

“Got a couple of CSAR choppers flying up and down the coast,” he says, his mouth tight. “Hopefully the search and rescue teams will pick up something we can use.”

I run down the checklist of procedures we’re supposed to follow. The security guys should be examining the surveillance tapes; Mewton should be alerting Traut; I should be tasking satellites and listening for electronic signals….

I activate our system’s listening protocols, adjusting the diagnostic tools so that any pings to our server will be noted and identified. If anyone is still trying to infiltrate our base, I want to gather as many details as possible.

Jud pulls his headset from his ears and snaps his fingers for my attention. “Didn’t you hear Mewton?”

“I heard.”

“So? Are we going downstairs?”

“Maybe she’s speaking metaphorically,” I answer, adjusting the angle of the KH 12 satellite I’m using to photograph the coastline. “Go underground? What else could she mean?”

“Right.” Jud settles his headset on his ears and gets back to work. He is monitoring reports from the NSA, looking for any terms that might refer to a kidnap victim or the convent. He has added my name and Aunt Renee’s to the Echelon intercept list, though my aunt’s captors will probably not be stupid enough to refer to her by name.

Jud has also contacted Britain’s MI6, asking for help in the investigation. They’ve been monitoring Saluda, too, but without success.

The dead enemy commando has been no help. He carried no identification, and the Polaroid Jeff Prather snapped has not resulted in a hit from our facial recognition software. I am sending a copy to several European field stations, but it’s too early to expect a response.

Even though I’m trying to concentrate on my work, I can’t help feeling as if there are tiny hands on my heart, slowly twisting the life from it. Not only is my aunt gone, but Clint and Mitch are dead. We can’t even watch the surveillance tapes to see what happened at the docks. Apparently some sort of electromagnetic-pulse device knocked out our cameras during the attack.

I pause to skim a quick e-mail from a contact in London, but I have to look away when my eyes fill with unexpected tears. I can’t help it. Sorrow is like an oozing knot inside me, and I regret the day I told Dr. Mewton to invite my aunt to the convent.

Wasn’t I better off when I lived from day to day and didn’t care a fig about what other people were thinking? In the last few weeks I have begun to understand people, to love them, and everyone I loved, even Mitch, has met with trouble.

Now that I have learned how to read expressions, I see fear all around me…even on Dr. Mewton’s face. As for me, I’m living in a state of near panic, my feelings quick and razor-sharp.

I didn’t really understand joy before Aunt Renee came into my life, but neither did I know this kind of fear. Or guilt. If anything happens to my aunt, I will never be able to forgive myself.

At his station, Judson removes his headset and drops it on his desk. “We were hit with a well-planned operation,” he says. “The EMP took us off-line, but the on-duty guard thought it was only a glitch in the system. The three tangos had to be dropped in by zip line from a chopper. Only men with military training could do that.”

“Excuse me.”

I look toward the doorway as Jeff moves into the room. “Dr. Mewton specifically asked you to move out.”

“We’re busy,” I tell him.

“I don’t think you understand,” he answers, hooking his thumb on the edge of his belt. “We’re transferring all operations to a secure level. No one is to spend another hour up top without an armed escort.”

I glance at Judson, who appears as startled as me.

“Up top?”
Jud emphasizes the two words. “What secure level?”

“Make backup copies onto the network and come with me,” Jeff says. “Now. Dr. Mewton wants everyone underground by 1300 hours. You have five minutes.”

I freeze in position, waiting for Jeff to leave. He must sense my hesitation, because he back steps and leaves the doorway.

I open my automatic backup program. “Underground?” I keep my voice low. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“I only work here, kid,” Jud says, running his own backups. “I didn’t build the place.”

Two minutes later Jeff is back, one hand on the door frame as he waits for us to shut down programs and gather our laptops. I glance at Judson, who has tossed his laptop and a stack of DVDs into his lap. He is already wheeling away from his station and moving toward the door.

I swallow and pick up my own computer. I fall into step beside Jud, and together we allow ourselves to be escorted into the elevator. Jeff moves to the corner and presses a button, then reaches inside his white T-shirt for something that looks like a dog tag. He slips the tag—a pass card—into a narrow slot beneath the call buttons. The elevator groans and begins to descend, traveling past the first floor.

“You know,” I say, thinking aloud, “I always wondered why it took so long for the elevator to go from the first floor to the dock. I assumed we were traveling through solid rock—I had no idea we were traveling through a classified area.”

Jeff says nothing, but locks his thumbs in his belt and waits for the door to open. Judson’s face swivels toward me, and in his uplifted brows I think I see surprise…and maybe a trace of pride.

In me?

The door slides open. I stand stock-still as my suspicions are confirmed, then step out of the car and enter a hallway illuminated entirely by electric light. Off the hallway are several reinforced doors, each fitted with a small square window. Dr. Mewton is standing beside an open door, a sat phone in her hand.

“Why,” I ask, not caring that I’m interrupting, “does a hospital facility need jail cells?”

Dr. Mewton’s silver brows shoot up to her hairline. “I’ll call you back,” she murmurs into the phone.

She disconnects the call, then crosses her arms and fixes her glare on me. “What are you talking about?”

“I used to think that Jeff only worked the night shift because I didn’t see him very often. But I didn’t see him because he works down here, isn’t that right? All those choppers that come and go—they’re not all patients, are they? Some of them are prisoners.”

Dr. Mewton holds out her hand. “You need to calm down, Sarah.”

“How can I? We’re not safe here, not anymore. My aunt is missing because someone knew about this place.”

“That’s enough,” Dr. Mewton snaps, using the tone she used to employ when I didn’t want to settle down and work on my studies.

But I am no longer a child. I spin on the ball of my foot and walk back to the elevator, but Jeff stands in front of the door, his arms crossed.

“You can’t go up,” Dr. Mewton calls, a silken thread of warning in her voice. “Not without an escort. It’s not safe.”

“But all my things are in my apartment—”

“Later I’ll send you up with Jeff and you can bring down a few items. Until then, you can sleep in one of the cells. We’re all sleeping down here tonight. Take a look around. You’ll find it’s not such a bad place.”

I grip my laptop and materials and walk back down the hallway, peering into the reinforced square windows in every door. This area contains five or six small cells, each equipped with a bed and a toilet. Beyond them are two interrogation rooms, beyond that, a computer area with several workstations. Beyond that, a medical examination room with an X-ray illuminator on the wall.

“To check for broken bones,” I whisper.

“What?” Dr. Mewton calls.

“Nothing.” I turn and walk back to the narrow cells, then select one at random and step inside.

When Aunt Renee spoke of the convent as a prison, I thought she was being melodramatic.

She was more right than she knew.

Renee

W
hen my sobs have quieted, Adolfo Rios pulls a chair from beneath another desk and plants his knee firmly in the seat. “So,” he says, gripping the high wooden back, “I have given you what you wanted. Now you must give something to me. I want the lie detector program.”

“What?” I glance at the computer screen, still covered with strings of numerals. I don’t know when we changed the subject, but I know less than nothing about Sarah’s current project.

I close my eyes and try to remember everything she’s told me about Adolfo Rios’s operation. “Saluda has a computer guru,” I say, glancing at the man across from me. “Perhaps it would be better if I explained it to him.”

A small smile puckers the man’s lips. “He is not here. And I do not need an explanation—I need the program.”

“Well, then, what can I say?” I lift my shoulders in a shrug. “I didn’t exactly have time to grab my briefcase before I was jerked out of my room last night.”

Rios tips his head back and laughs. “You are…how do you say? A comedienne? A funny lady.”

“I try, you know. A good quip comes in handy at office parties.”

His smile vanishes. “I am not so stupid as you think,
señora.
You can get into your network and download the program. And you will do it now.”

I shake my head. “Because of your little venture, my network is in lockdown. I can’t get in.”

“You can. You undoubtedly have—how do you say?—a back door.”

“Why should I give my secrets away?”

“Because,” he says, his smile almost friendly, “I have given you what you wanted—and you do not want to end up like the man in the pictures.”

I blow out my cheeks and place my fingers on the keyboard. “I’ll try,” I say, “but my back door isn’t easy to slip into.”

“You have a password?”

“Well…yes and no.” I am improvising, relying on conversations with Sarah and memories of
Alias
and James Bond movies. “The password changes every twelve hours—and after every intrusion. It’s probably changed twice since I left, so I’ll have to unlock the encryption key. If I can’t unlock it, I’ll have to create one.”

He frowns at me, his dark brows knitting above his eyes, but eventually he relaxes. I am spouting gibberish, but it must be decent gibberish, or by now I’d be spitting blood.

I straighten my spine and tap the enter key. “If I’m going to work for you,” I say, “I’m going to need food. A paper and pen. A bottle of water.”

His upper lip curls. For an instant I’m sure he’s going to throttle me again, but then he looks toward the door and snaps his fingers.

If only he’d leave, maybe I could think.

I hunch over the keyboard and struggle to remember what Sarah has taught me. I hit the enter key twice, and am relieved to see a blinking cursor appear beneath the lines of code. I have no way of knowing if I can reach Sarah through this computer, but if it’s connected to Saluda’s network, it must be hooked up to the Internet.

I wait and listen as Rios leaves the room. Apparently the big boss has decided to give me some space, though he’s positioned a burly guard by the door. Apart from the unsmiling muscleman, I am alone.

I close my eyes and try to visualize the numbers Sarah recited when she had me ping her computer. It had something to do with my birth year—1972—and sweet sixteen, followed by two zeros.

1972.16.00 doesn’t look right.

197.16.0.0? No.

172.16.0.0. I smile as I remember Sarah talking about a light going on in the brain when an old memory is accessed. Right now, some neuron in my frontal lobe is firing in neon.

Again and again I type the sequence, pausing only when the goon at the door steps closer. “What are you doing?”

“Go away, you’re distracting me.”

He hovers behind me, a disapproving shadow on my right hand. “But what are you doing?”

“If you must know—” I exhale heavily “—I’m inventing a key code. There’s no way I can countermand the security perimeter if the integers and pixels aren’t congruent with the radii of the hypotenuse. In cryptography, the ciphers must align with the emitted microbursts or the process won’t work.”

I have no idea what I have just said, but apparently my bodyguard doesn’t, either. He sinks into a creaking chair and watches me, satisfaction evident in the relaxed line of his brows.

After pinging Sarah’s computer several times, I throw up my hands in mock exasperation. “How am I supposed to decrypt the algorithm in my head? I asked for paper and a pen.”

Slowly, the mountain of a man pulls himself out of the chair and moves toward the door. When he has gone, I type Sarah’s IP address again and again and again and again—

“Aquí lo tiene.”
He sets paper and a pen on the table. “Now get to work.”

I write out several lines of mathematical nonsense, then tap the pen against my chin and pretend to agonize. A glance behind me reveals that my guard’s chair is now leaning against the wall. A night without sleep has taken its toll, and he is dozing.

I begin to write in earnest, jotting down my thoughts, wishes, and fears. The pen keeps threatening to slip from my trembling fingers, but I cling to it and scrawl out my feelings until nothing remains to be said. Then I fold the paper into a small square and slip it into the pocket of my pajama pants.

I return to the keyboard and send another series of pings. From somewhere deep in my memory, I recall a couple of random DOS commands that might rewrite or reformat the hard drive.

Since I’m not going to be able to give Adolfo Rios what he wants, maybe I can at least fry his computer. But I don’t dare do anything irreversible as long as there’s even a slight chance I might be able to reach Sarah.

I am about to send another ping when I hear raised voices from the front of the building. A new arrival stomps forward in heavy boots, and several men greet him in Spanish. One of the guards laughs, and the unfamiliar footsteps draw closer.
“¿Que pasa?”
a new voice calls.
“¿Que tal?”

A sense of foreboding descends over me with a shiver as a man in jeans and a cotton shirt moves into my field of vision. His brows lift and his face shifts into an expression of surprise.

I am undoubtedly wearing the same expression, because I am looking at a dead man.