Wired (16 page)

PART FOUR

Reunion

25

Kira
Miller took the lead as they hiked through the woods. Desh was close behind,
his .45 trained on her back, while Connelly and Griffin brought up the rear;
all four staying alert for possible ambushes. Their destination was Kira’s SUV,
rented under an assumed name, which was parked at a campground a half-mile
distant and which could not be immediately traced. They were in an untouched
section of the woods, blazing their own trail, and their progress was slower
than Desh would have liked. Kira had used a small GPS device to find the
clearing, and she consulted it periodically to be sure they were taking the
most direct line to her vehicle possible.

Desh
fumed silently. How had he let Smith slip through his fingers? Smith had known
they couldn’t wait until he regained consciousness to interrogate him, and
dragging his unconscious body along as they made their escape would be equally
foolhardy. As expected, the man had carried no identification.
Shit
,
thought Desh for the third time. He had been so close to finally learning what
was going on and who was pulling Smith’s strings. It was maddening.

Desh
had tranquilized the remaining commandos to ensure they couldn’t sound an
alarm. After he had cut Griffin and Connelly free, he had taken the standard,
military first-aid kit from the helicopter and had cleaned and dressed the
colonel’s wound, giving him a potent pain killer as well. Before they had taken
off into the woods, Desh also hurriedly dressed the wound of the
now-unconscious soldier Connelly had shot.

All
in all, Connelly had been lucky, but he had still lost a considerable amount of
blood and the risk of infection was significant. He needed to get to a doctor
soon.

Kira
stopped walking and gestured toward Desh's gun. “Do you really need to point
that at me?” she whispered, taking care that her voice wouldn’t carry and
advertise their presence.

It
was a good question, thought Desh. Did he? She had warned him about Smith;
warned him that Connelly was in danger. And she had been right. She had also
just bailed them out of a big mess.

But
what if this had been nothing but a set-up? For all Desh knew she and Smith
were working together. Still, to what end? If she wanted Desh dead she could
have accomplished this at the motel. If she was allied with Smith to acquire Griffin
and Connelly along with him, they were seconds away from this as well. What’s
more, she had voluntarily put herself under Desh’s control.

Desh
wasn’t about to holster his gun until they were in more secure territory, but
he joined Kira at the front of the procession and no longer pointed it in her
direction.

“Thanks,”
she whispered earnestly.

“So
you bugged the sweatshirt, too, didn't you?” asked Desh in hushed tones as they
began to move again, barely managing to keep any trace of admiration from his
voice.

Kira
nodded guiltily.

“What
are you doing here?”

“I
knew they’d follow the colonel to your meeting place and try to kill him. I
decided I couldn’t let that happen.”

Desh
studied her carefully but detected no sign of deceit. “Do you really have a
suicide tooth?” he whispered.

A
broad smile came over her face. “No,” she admitted. “It was all I could think
of at the time.” She raised her eyebrows. “Actually, I figured my bluster
wouldn’t keep Smith from deciding I was bluffing for very long. I was counting
on you to get the hint and jump in—which is exactly what you did.”

Desh
knew that he should have done so immediately, but he had been too busy admiring
her performance. “How did you know I was watching?” he asked.

“I
heard Smith threaten your friends and give you three minutes to return and
surrender. I knew you wouldn’t let them die,” she whispered approvingly. “And I
knew if you heard my voice you’d stay hidden to see what was going on.”

Desh
nodded but didn’t respond. In addition to being scientifically brilliant, she
could think on her feet as well as anyone he had ever known—and this was saying
quite a lot.

Before
long they entered a large clearing with a sign that read, “Campground 3B”. Eight
small wood cabins were arranged in a semicircle within the clearing, and cars
were parked beside several of them. A gravel road led away from the campground
on the opposite side.

Kira
had parked the SUV at the edge of the campground, and soon they were all
inside, with Kira driving, Desh in the passenger seat, and Connelly and Griffin
in the back.

As
Kira started the engine, Desh turned to her and said, “I assume you came here
from the road that parallels the one we took. Can you get us back there?”

“Absolutely.”
She pulled onto the gravel road and slowly moved forward. Connelly winced as
the SUV vibrated on the unpaved surface and jostled his injury.

“Where
to once we hit the main artery?” she asked.

Desh
pursed his lips in concentration. “That depends. Any guess as to when they’ll
link this car to us?”

“Hard
to say,” she replied. “It depends on when they discover their raid back there
failed, and how many cars are on the road. It shouldn’t be immediate, though.”

Desh’s
eyes narrowed as he sorted through various possibilities. “There’s a large
shopping center between Petersburg and Richmond called the Manor Hill Mall—it’s
all-enclosed, making it inaccessible to satellite surveillance. We could lose
ourselves in the crowds and then leave. They may be able to track us
to
there, but they’ll have a hell of a time tracking us
from
there.”

Kira
looked impressed. “I like it,” she said.

“Colonel?”
said Desh.

“Me
too,” said Connelly. “I recommend we split up once we’re there.”

“Agreed,”
said Desh. He turned to Kira. “If you can get us on I-95 north, the mall is
just off a main exit.”

She
nodded. “Will do.”

The
wide gravel road soon ended in a skinny paved one that wound its way through
the heart of the woods for a half mile before hitting an arrow-straight main
artery. Kira pulled onto the main road and accelerated as rapidly as the rental
would allow.

Desh
turned in his seat to face Connelly. “Colonel, how are you feeling?”

“I’m
fine,” said Connelly stoically, but blood was still slowly seeping through his
bandages and he looked pale.

“Matt?”
said Desh. “How about you? Are you okay?”

“Not
really,” he said. “But it’s hard to complain when I’m sitting next to someone
with a bullet wound who isn’t,” he said dryly.

Desh
was encouraged that Griffin had recovered his sense of humor. “When we get to
the mall, we’ll split up into two groups,” said Desh. “I’ll go with Kira. Matt,
can I count on you to look after the colonel?”

“Look
after
him
?”

Desh
nodded. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not doing as well as he’s pretending.” He
reached into his pocket and pulled out his thick stack of hundreds; passing
about forty of them to Griffin in the back seat. “A little spending money,” he
said. “I need you to see to it that he gets to a doctor.”

“I’ll
do my best,” said Griffin solemnly.

“Colonel,
any good military doctors you trust with your life?” asked Desh.

Connelly
considered. “Yes. Don Menken. He’s retired but still lives near Bragg. I can
trust him to patch me up and not ask any questions.”

Kira
opened the SUV’s center console and pulled out a cell phone. She passed it back
to Griffin. “Use this phone to reach us,” she instructed. “I have its mate. Hit
Autodial 1
and it will speed-dial my number. The phone is completely
secure.”

“No
cell phone is secure,” said Connelly wearily, the vitality of his voice
beginning to wane as his blood loss began to catch up with him.

“The
signal can be intercepted easily enough, but the phone can’t be connected to
me. Even if it could, the audio is sent scrambled. These two phones can
unscramble each other’s signals, but even top cryptographic experts won’t be
able to decipher the conversation.”

Connelly
doubted her code was nearly as tight as she thought it was, but he didn’t argue
the point.

“Let’s
come up with a game plan we can use when we get to the mall,” suggested Desh.

“Agreed,”
rasped Connelly. “But first give me the shorthand version of why we’re joining
forces with enemy number one here.”

Kira
glanced at Desh with interest, as though curious as to what he would say.

Desh
sighed. Connelly was the least well informed of any of them. “We both know
there’s far more going on here than we understand,” he began. “Smith’s men crashed
the party at the motel. And Smith had a cell phone that responded to the number
you gave me and told me you were taking orders from him. But we know that was a
lie. Kira claims she’s innocent and not involved in any terror plots. She
warned me that you were in danger from Smith, and she was right.” He raised his
eyebrows. “And she did risk herself to rescue us,” he added pointedly.

“You’ve
seen her file,” responded Connelly. “She’s a brilliant manipulator and liar. This
could all have been staged.”

“This
is true. And believe me, I haven’t lost sight of that. But she claims she can
prove her innocence and explain what’s going on, and I’m going to give her that
chance. I can assure you that I’ll bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the
table.”

Desh
looked at his watch and calculated how long it would take them to reach their
destination. “We need to be sure we know what we’ll be doing at the mall and
think it through so we don’t make any obvious mistakes,” he said. “But that
shouldn’t take long. With the time remaining I’ll try to give you a thirty-thousand-foot
view of what I know. Matt can fill in more of the details when he has the
chance.”

“Fair
enough,” said Connelly.

“Before
I begin, I need to warn you: without the details you’re going to find most of
this hard to believe.”

Matt
Griffin smiled slyly and rolled his eyes. “You can say that again,” he muttered
from the back of the SUV.

26

The
Manor Hill Mall was a hive of activity. Between them, Petersburg and Richmond
had a population of over a million people, and it wasn’t hard to believe that
half of them were shopping at Manor Hill. The mall was four stories high, with
all four stories under a vaulted atrium ceiling, and encompassed a total square
footage of retail space that was hard to comprehend. Connelly had donned Desh’s
windbreaker to hide his blood soaked bandages. Desh and Kira had dropped Griffin
and the colonel at one end of the mall before driving almost half a mile to
enter the mall at its opposite end.

As
they had planned during the drive, Griffin and Connelly entered a crowded
clothing store and made themselves over from head to toe in an ensemble chosen
to help them blend in. They then bought scissors and shaving gear and emerged
from a restroom ten minutes later without any facial hair. When Griffin had
been told this would be necessary he had almost mutinied; but in the end he had
agreed that this was a better alternative than being discovered and shot to
death—barely. Connelly was also pained to part with his prized mustache, but he
took the loss with military stoicism.

After
altering their appearance, the two men ordered a cab under an assumed name and
took it to a side entrance of a nearby Hilton hotel. They then passed through
the lobby to the front of the hotel and convinced another cabbie to take them
all the way to Connelly’s doctor friend. The cabbie had adamantly refused to
drive this far until he was handed a stack of hundred dollar bills, after which
he decided that the customer was always king, and he'd be happy to take them
where they wanted to go.

Desh
and Kira changed outfits as well. Desh was now wearing a pair of pre-faded
jeans and a hooded, burgundy-and-gold Washington Redskins sweatshirt with
oversized pockets. Kira replaced the tan jacket she had been wearing with a
blue one of a different style, and her hair was now tucked up inside a Redskins
ball cap. Both wore tennis shoes for comfort and mobility.

Whoever
tracked them to the mall would expect their stay to be brief, just long enough
so they could lose themselves among the crowd before racing off by cab or
stolen car. The last thing anyone would expect them to do would be to loiter at
the mall for several hours in plain sight, which is exactly why they planned to
do so, leaving on a bus that wasn’t scheduled to depart for several hours yet.

Manor
Hill had fourteen restaurants and a Food Court. They found an information booth
and asked for a restaurant with a romantic ambiance; shorthand for one that was
so poorly lighted they couldn’t be easily seen while inside. At the same time
such lighting would allow
them
to readily see anyone entering the
restaurant from the mall.

Twenty
minutes later they were in a booth in the back of
Montag’s Gourmet Pizza
,
a restaurant whose dusk-like level of lighting was unexpected in a pizza place,
gourmet or otherwise, but was perfect for their needs.

The
waiter noticed their matching Redskins attire from a distance and assumed they
were on a date, but as he got a closer look at the grime and dense shadow of
stubble on Desh’s face, he changed his mind. They must be married, he thought. No
one on a date would have such little regard for personal hygiene.

Desh
ordered a soda, Kira iced-tea, and they ordered a large pizza to split. Although
Desh knew he had far more important things to worry about, sharing a pizza
seemed too much like breaking bread with the devil for his taste; albeit a
devil who had probably saved Connelly’s life. He remained determined to keep as
much emotional distance from the woman across from him as he could manage.

When
the waiter left, Desh stealthily drew his gun and hid it on his lap, under his
oversized sweatshirt, with his finger on the trigger. He situated himself at an
awkward angle in the booth so he could watch both Kira and the entrance to the
restaurant as they spoke.

After
the waiter returned with their drinks and then left again, Kira got right to
the point. “I assume you remember where we were last night before we were, ah .
. . interrupted?”

Desh
nodded. It was hard to believe their discussion had taken place just the night
before. “You can make yourself smarter, but when you do you turn into a
psychopath.” As he spoke he continued to anxiously watch the entrance,
scrutinizing anyone who approached the hostess podium and scanning all human mall
traffic in his view.

“Who
knew you had such a way with words,” said Kira. She smiled warmly. “That may be
the most succinct summation in history.”

“We
can’t be sure when we’ll be interrupted again,” said Desh icily, subconsciously
trying to counter her warmth. “Since you’re so eager to convince me you’re not
working with terrorists, let’s not waste any time.”

“Agreed,”
said Kira soberly. She quickly gathered her thoughts. “I left off about
two-and-a-half years after I joined NeuroCure,” she said. “When I had achieved
my breakthrough. Do you have any questions about the treatment before I move
on?”

Desh
thought about this as he watched a group of teenaged girls stroll by the
restaurant, wearing clothing that was several years too old for them along with
a colorful assortment of flashy costume jewelry. “How long does the
transformation last?” he asked.

“Only
about an hour. I was afraid to make it last any longer. Not without better
understanding the treatment and what it was doing to me.”

“Including
your newfound admiration for the work of Nietzsche?”

“Yes.”

“I’m
surprised the effect is so short.”

“It
seems longer when you’re experiencing it. And at this level of intelligence,
the number of insights you can have in a single hour is staggering. To make the
effect permanent, I would need to make other modifications to the body. Even in
an hour your body becomes depleted of the molecular precursors for
neurotransmitters and you get a craving for glucose like you wouldn’t believe. After
a transformation, I wouldn’t feel completely normal for days. I decided not to
try it more than once a week, at most.”

Desh
wondered if anything Smith had told him in the car was true. Since Kira had
listened in to this entire conversation there was no reason to be coy. “So where
did you decide to focus this towering IQ of yours?” he asked. “Smith said you
were working on extending human life and eventually conquering mortality
itself.”

“He
was right,” she said. “I’ll go into that in more detail later, but this was one
of three major goals I set for myself.”

Desh
considered pressing her to talk more about longevity, but decided to be patient
and let her continue in her own way. “What were the other two?”

“One
was to achieve another jump in intelligence. In my transformed state it was
clear that a level substantially higher than what I had achieved was possible.”
She took a sip of her iced-tea and set it back down. “My last goal was to um—” She
paused and looked slightly embarrassed. “Accumulate massive wealth.”

“And
here I was beginning to think you were Mother Teresa.”

Kira
nodded. “I had a feeling that would be your reaction,” she said. “In my
defense, I didn’t want the money for luxuries. I just wanted to be sure that
money would never be an issue if I needed equipment or supplies for my other
projects, wherever my enhanced intelligence would lead me.”

“I
wouldn’t doubt that immortals would need to have a pretty big nest egg,” he
allowed. He fished a breadstick from a small wicker basket on the table filled
with an assortment of rolls. “Becoming wealthy is the one goal I’m fairly
certain you achieved. That is, if I can be certain of anything these days,” he
added in frustration. “But I’m eager to learn just how it is you were able to accomplish
this so quickly,” he finished accusingly.

“You
think I sold my soul to terrorists?”

“Why
not? Even if you aren’t sociopathic normally, you admit you are in your
enhanced state. Why let a little thing like the deaths of millions slow you
down?”

“Come
on, David,” she snapped in annoyance. “Think it through. Even if I acted on my
sociopathic tendencies—which I didn’t—I would only be a raving sociopath, not
stupid
.
I had achieved immeasurable intelligence. Creativity that would put Thomas
Edison to shame. An intellect that would make Stephen Hawking look slow. With
capabilities like these, do you really think I’m going to spend years working
on a bioterror agent to sell to people who would happily kill me for not
covering my face?” She shook her head in exasperation. “I could make millions
just selling the cryptographic software that I thought up in ten minutes, or
any number of other inventions that could be marketed immediately. What do you
think the government would pay for a material that completely shields heat
signatures?”

Desh
frowned. “When you put it that way, working with terrorists does sound pretty
stupid.”

“
Thank
you
,” she said emphatically. She paused as the waiter came over to check on
them.

“Not
that it matters,” she continued as soon as the waiter was out of earshot, “but
I made my fortune in the stock market.”

Desh
raised his eyebrows. “That wouldn’t have been my first guess. How?”

“I
analyzed the market while at an elevated level of intelligence,” she replied. “When
you’re in the transformed state you have absolute access to your memory.
All
of your memory. The human brain stores every single input it ever receives:
everything you think, read, see, touch or experience. In our normal,
un-optimized mode, we’re unable to access all but the tiniest tip of that
iceberg. But in my enhanced state I can make correlations and logical
connections between bits of information I didn’t even know I had. Treacherously
complex patterns become obvious. Market insights quickly present themselves.”

“Did
you understand your analysis when you returned to normal?”

Kira
smiled. “Not even a little,” she admitted. “All I know is that I was right
about eighty percent of the time, more than enough to make me very rich, very
fast. I underwent my treatment four different times with the sole purpose of
analyzing the stock market. And I only placed the riskiest of bets. Currency
fluctuations, options, futures—that sort of thing. Over a three-month period I
increased my wealth a thousand-fold. The stock market is legalized gambling and
I had transformed myself into the ultimate Rain Man.”

As
usual, she made the most fantastic claims seem eminently plausible. “So why the
false identities and Swiss bank accounts?”

“I
started to get paranoid, so I began taking precautions.”

“Is
paranoia another side effect of the enhanced intelligence?”

“No,”
she replied solemnly. “It’s a side effect of getting robbed.”

Desh’s
eyes narrowed. “Is this where the arch nemesis you wrote about in your E-mail
comes in? Your Moriarty?”

“I
like that,” said Kira, smiling. “Gives me hope that you aren’t still convinced
that
I’m
Moriarty. If you had said, ‘Your arch nemesis, Sherlock
Holmes,’ I’d really be depressed right now.”

Desh
couldn’t help but return her smile.

“One
of the things that popped out when I was studying you was how wonderfully well
read you are,” said Kira earnestly.

“Moriarty
isn’t exactly an obscure reference. The majority of ten-year-olds know who he
is.”

She
smiled and her eyes sparkled playfully. “That doesn’t make what I said any less
true. Besides, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I’m not convinced the
majority of
adults
even know the name of our Speaker of the House.”

A
slight smile played across Desh’s face. “So tell me about the robbery?”

Desh
tensed as a fit man in his thirties with a serious look on his face approached
the hostess station and began scanning the restaurant carefully, his eyes
moving in an arc that would soon include their booth. “Duck!” whispered Desh as
he slipped the gun out from under his sweatshirt and braced himself for action.
Kira slid down in the booth as if she had dropped a coin on the floor.

Seconds
later the man’s eyes stopped shifting as his gaze settled on a booth two over
from where they were seated. An attractive woman who was seated with two
preschool children waved at him happily. He raised his hand in acknowledgment,
his face becoming relaxed, and he hurriedly joined his family.

Desh
let out the breath he had been holding. “False alarm,” he whispered. “Sorry.”

Kira
returned to a fully upright position. “Don’t be,” she said, shaking her head. “Better
to err on the side of caution. Besides, I’m sure my pulse will return to normal
in an hour or so,” she added with a grin.

“You
were going to tell me about the robbery,” prompted Desh.

“Right,”
said Kira. “I came home from work one night and my place had been broken into. I
had a bottle with twenty-three gellcaps and my lab notebook stored in the false
bottom of a dresser drawer. Both were missing.”

“You
had a dresser with a false-bottomed drawer?”

“I
thought putting valuables in a safe would be too obvious. I measured the drawer
and had someone at a hardware store cut a platform to my exact specifications. I
wallpapered it to match the bottoms of the other drawers and stacked some
sweaters on top.”

Desh
raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Did they take anything else?” he asked,
chewing absently on the breadstick he had taken and continuing to watch the
entrance.

“Nothing.
They knew exactly what they were after.”

“Any
ideas who it was?”

“Not
when it happened, no. I was stunned. I had been careful not to leave a trail. I
routinely disposed of the rodents I was using and I never let my lab notebook
out of my sight. Until then, I wouldn’t have believed it possible that anyone
could have known what I was doing. On a hunch, the next day I hired someone at
an executive protection agency, like yours, to look for listening devices.” She
frowned deeply. “He found several in both my office and home. That’s the day I
truly began to get paranoid.”