“Where’s Sienna Westgate?”
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “They took her up to the main house, but I don’t know where.”
One of the other adults came forward. He looked familiar. “I saw you in the tunnel in Korea,” Kurt said.
His English was vaguely European. Kurt guessed that Spanish, Portuguese, or even Italian was his first language.
“You’re Montresor,” Kurt said, using his hacker name.
The man nodded again. “My real name is Diego. I know where they took her. The man who runs things, Sebastian, he has a control room on the top floor. He watches everything from there, I think. Directly below him is a networked series of high-end processors and computers. When they took me up to the house to work, that is where they kept me.”
“What did they have you do?” Kurt asked.
“I hack into a system and edit programs. I create hidden doorways and what we call hides or blinds.”
“Those are hunting terms,” Kurt said. “What do they mean in the programming world?”
The man paused as if thinking of a way to explain it. “They’re like black holes into which we can hide a virus. Even the most advanced antivirus software will not find it. And then at a later date, we activate the code.”
“And what does the code do?” Kurt asked.
“I just create the blind,” Montresor said. “Others build the virus.”
“And what does the virus usually do?”
“Takes control of the system,” he said. “Forces it to do something it is not supposed to do.”
Montresor, Kurt thought to himself. How perfect a handle for someone who hides things in a labyrinth where they will never be found.
“What kind of systems did you hack? Pentagon? CIA?”
Montresor shook his head. “Banking systems mostly. Accounting programs. Transfer protocols.”
Kurt’s mind raced. Banks and a gang descended from bank robbers and counterfeiters. He wondered if there could be a connection and then decided this was not the time to find out. All that mattered was stopping the Brèvard family, whatever they were doing.
He turned to Joe. “Call it in,” he said. “I’m going to find Sienna.”
“I should go with you,” Joe said.
“No,” Kurt said, “stay with them. They’re going to need you to lead them out when the Marines come over the wall.”
Aboard the lead Black Hawk, code-named Dragon One, Lt. Brooks studied his men as the strike team continued inbound. Some of the men talked and joked, some checked their weapons and gear repeatedly in some kind of ritual, and others had faces of stone. Different personalities got ready for battle in different ways, but one look told Brooks they were ready.
So far, they’d come three hundred miles south, met up with the tanker aircraft, and completed the tricky nighttime refueling operation without incident. From that point they’d turned southeast and were now tracking for the coast, traveling in formation, at a hundred thirty knots a mere fifty feet above the surface of the Mozambique Channel.
“We’ll be crossing into Madagascar airspace in seven minutes,” the pilot informed him.
“Any word from the Bataan?”
“Nothing yet,” the pilot said. “If we don’t get final authorization by the time we hit that limit, I’ll have no choice but to abort.”
Brooks understood. He was in charge of the mission, but those were the standing orders. “Throttle back a bit,” he suggested. “And take us parallel to the line for a while.” “Sir?”
“It’ll save us some fuel,” Brooks said, “and it’ll give those marine biologists a little more time to make contact.” “You really think they’re going to pull this off?” the pilot asked skeptically.
“I’m not sure,” Brooks said, “but I’d hate to be headed home if they call for help.”
The pilot nodded his agreement, made a quick radio call to the other helicopters, and then banked to the right and began reducing speed. The other Black Hawks matched him, and the headlong race toward the coast became a more leisurely flight parallel to it. There was little danger of them being picked up on radar—Madagascar had only a primitive network. Fuel and time were bigger concerns.
“Okay, Lieutenant,” the pilot said, “we’ve dialed it down to the economy setting. But we can’t do this for too long.” As it turned out, they didn’t have to. Fifteen minutes later, a signal came over the satellite downlink.
“Dragon leader, this is Courthouse. Do you copy?”
Courthouse was the Bataan’s code name. Brooks pressed the transmit switch. “Courthouse, this is Dragon leader, go ahead.”
“You are cleared to the objective. Current target status is green. Friendlies have been identified. Total of fifteen, possibly sixteen. Their location will be marked by a green flare and smoke. Other buildings are believed to hold up to twenty hostiles. Light weapons are indicated.”
A surge of adrenaline pumped through Brooks and he glanced at the pilot and toward the coast like a referee signaling first down. The pilot took the hint, turned inbound once again, and brought the Black Hawk back up to full speed.
“Roger that, Courthouse. We are two minutes from continental divide and inbound to the target. Will contact you on our way home.”
As the mission director from the Bataan signed off, Brooks considered the state of things. In a world that had grown used to watching their military operations play out in real time, this one was being blacked out. There was no feed being broadcast to the Situation Room in the White House, no group of generals and politicians watching the play-by-play as if it were a movie or a big game. With the whole government unsure which systems were still secure and which had been hacked, no one was taking a chance. The powers that be would wait in silence. Eventually, they’d receive a simple phone call from the Bataan’s commander telling them if the mission had succeeded or failed.
As the Marine strike force turned inbound, Kurt made his way around the side of the Brèvard palace. Lights aimed up at the structure meant the last ten feet or so would expose him no matter how the infiltration suit attempted to compensate. Instead of crossing through them, he swung wide, passed an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and made his way around the back. There he found an overhanging veranda.
Using a chair to boost himself up, he clambered onto the deck and sprinted forward. He managed to force the door and slip inside.
Thankful that he’d set off no alarm system in the process, he moved into the hall and found himself surrounded by framed works of art, intricate tapestries, and statues that looked as if they might belong in a museum.
He needed to find a stairwell that led upward and began to move down the hall, stopping at the sound of footfalls coming his way from an adjacent corridor.
He backtracked and took cover behind a statue of some Greek hero with a laurel leaf on his head and pressed himself as far into the shadows as possible until the figure passed by.
It was Calista. She was speaking into a radio, giving orders about something. She never saw Kurt or even looked in his direction. As she reached the far end of the hall, she disappeared into a room.
In a house of many rooms, Kurt knew he’d be hard-pressed to find the right one in time. But seeing Calista pass by brought a new idea to mind. Checking the hall in both directions and seeing no one else coming, he moved from behind the statue and backtracked, heading toward the room Calista had just entered.
Calista was ready to leave. Over the years she’d begun to feel claustrophobic in the family home, a sensation that had only gotten worse over the past few months. Grabbing a small backpack from a shelf in her closet, she began to pack.
Ever the pragmatist, she didn’t care for the clothes or the jewels. Her items of importance were those that would be useful: passports in several names, bundles of cash in a few different currencies, a knife, a pistol, and three spare magazines. The one item of sentimental value she had was a necklace with a diamond ring hanging from it that had belonged to thei
r mother. Sebastian had given it to her.
She eyed the necklace for a moment and then placed it into a side pocket and zipped the pocket shut. Nothing else in the opulent mansion mattered to her. It was all fake. The artwork, tapestries, and the antique furniture were nothing but good forgeries. That’s what their family did. They gave life to lies.
About the only thing she would miss were the horses. As she thought about her favorite, a horse named Tana, which meant “sunshine” in Malagasy, it dawned on her that Sebastian might have rigged the stables to explode like everything else in the compound.
This struck her as cruel. Humankind was fairly worthless in her eyes, but animals, in their innocence, were something else. They had no schemes or desires other than to please their masters and receive their rewards in the form of food and shelter and attention.
She zipped the bag shut and decided to hike down to the stable and turn the animals out. There was no reason for them to burn to death.
Throwing the pack over one shoulder, she left the bedroom, entered her sitting room, and tracked straight for the door. As she approached the door, she noticed it was closed but not shut. That was more than odd, she never left the door unlatched.
She put her hand in the bag, grabbing for her pistol.
“Sorry, Calista,” a voice said from behind her. “I’m afraid it’s game over.”
She froze in her tracks. The timbre of the voice was easily recognizable, as was the calm and certain delivery of the words. She had no doubt that Kurt Austin was standing behind her.
“Toss the bag on the floor and turn around slowly,” he said.
She let her shoulders sag and flipped the backpack into a corner. Pivoting slowly, she found Kurt sitting in a high-backed Victorian chair, aiming a lethal-looking rifle in her direction.
“I believe we’ve done this before,” she said.
“We have,” Kurt replied, standing up. “And we’re going to keep doing it until we get it right.”
She studied him for a moment. He looked out of place with all the armor. Less handsome, less unique. As if he’d read her mind, he pulled off the hood.
“How on earth did you get in here?” she asked. “We have cameras, guards, motion sensors.”
“Nothing’s foolproof,” Kurt said.
That much was certain. “You can’t expect to get out alive,” she said. “We’re ready for you. We’ve been waiting for you to make a move.”
His eyebrows went up. “Really?” he said. “Because it doesn’t look that way to me. Your men at the front gate are half asleep. The gang in the bunkhouse are celebrating like it’s Bastille Day. And we’ve already found the hostages while taking out two of your guards. All without the slightest peep from the rest of you.”
“There are at least fifty men here loyal to my brothers and me. You’re overwhelmingly outnumbered.”
“For now,” he said smugly.
She pursed her lips. So there were reinforcements coming. And coming soon. Her brother was sitting around foolishly thinking they were not in danger yet. Her feelings were torn. Silently she cursed him for his arrogance even as she wished she could warn him.
“If you’ve already won, then what do you want from me?” she asked. “Answers perhaps? Are you still trying to figure out what happened to you on the Ethernet?”
He smiled at her. It was a grin both endearing and proud. “Too late for that,” he said. “I know what happened. Enough of it anyway. It all came back once they debugged me in Korea.”
She shifted her weight. “Then you know if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been killed and buried at sea in the hull of that yacht just like all the others we encountered.”
“Considering that you caused the danger in the first place, that doesn’t really carry a lot of weight with me. On the other hand,” he added, “I do have a newfound appreciation for the importance of remembering the past accurately, thanks to you. That being the case, I thought I’d return the favor.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, growing tired of the conversation.
He studied her with those ice-blue eyes, taking her in, measuring her. Finally, he unzipped a diagonal pocket on the right sight of his vest and pulled from it a folded sheet of paper. He placed it down on the small stand between the chairs, smoothed it flat, and then pulled away.
“Take a look” was all he said.
She hesitated and then stepped cautiously forward, reaching for the paper like someone might reach for a dangerous animal, keeping as much distance between her body and the printed sheet as possible.
She tilted the page to catch the light and gave the image a quick once-over. “What is this supposed to be?”
“It’s a family,” he said. “Believe or not, it’s your family. Your real family.”
She looked up at him suspiciously. “What are you talking about?”
She noticed he was watching her with a sort of detached, almost professorial look.
“The Brèvards aren’t your family, Calista, the people in the photograph are. The woman’s name is Abigail. She was your mother. Her friends called her Abby. The man’s name is Stewart, he was your father. The two boys are Nathan and Zack—or I should say, they were named Nathan and Zack.”
For reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, she began to feel sick. “You expect me to believe this?”
“Look at the woman. Look at her face. You two could be twins.”
She wasn’t blind, she saw the likeness. It was nonsense. “You think you can trick me?”
He didn’t blink. “It’s not a trick. Your mother was a telecommunications expert, your father worked on satellite guidance. They were both very intelligent people, brilliant in their understandings of math and science. Just like you, I’m guessing. They had a good life in suburban England. Unfortunately, the Brèvard family came along, took them from the world, and made them disappear, the same way you kidnapped Sienna and her children. They were bartered for and used for what they knew the same exact way you and Sebastian and the rest of this sick family have used the people you’re holding hostage.”
She was shaking her head, filled with rage, a kind of rage she was having a hard time controlling. It was unlike her—she was cold, emotionless. Why should this make her so angry? she wondered. Of course he would lie. Of course he would try something to confuse her. But why, if he and his friends were all but assured of victory in their own minds, would he bother?
She felt an urge to charge him, to put her hands around his throat and choke the life out of him if she could. Even if he shot her in response, at least she wouldn’t have to listen to any more of this.
She lunged for him. “You’re a liar,” she screamed.
She slammed one fist into his chest, where it uselessly struck the body armor, and reached for his face with her other hand, intent on clawing out his eyes. But he was too quick and too strong. He caught her arm and stopped it. He spun her around and folded her arms across her chest, holding her from behind.
“I’m not lying,” he said. “I’m not trying to hurt you. But you should know the truth.”
“I don’t want to know!”
“Believe me, you do,” he said. “Because these people are better than the Brèvards. These people loved life, they didn’t abuse and destroy it, and you’re one of them.”
She continued to thrash and tried to slam and elbow him, but it was no use.
“I know what kind of hell it is to wonder what’s real and what isn’t,” he said quietly. “I know what you’re going through right now. I lived it for months, but you’ve had it worse, you’ve lived it all your life. I can only imagine what it’s done to you.”
“It’s done nothing,” she insisted, trying desperately to kick him and pull free.
He turned her around and looked into her eyes. “Your father was killed trying to escape his captors,” he said. “He was gunned down in broad daylight by a man who was never found. He’d been gagged and beaten. He’d been tortured.”
“Stop it!”
“Your mother and brothers fared worse. They’d found a lifeboat on a ship half buried in the sand, but they didn’t have enough water. They died from dehydration, drifting on the ocean a hundred miles from here.”
She froze. “What did you say?”
“They died at sea,” he repeated, “on a lifeboat half gutted with rot. We’re pretty certain they found it on an old ship that was buried in the river several miles from here.”
An image flashed in her mind, it struck like a bolt of lightning. A brief glimpse of the rivets on the dark metal plating, the rushing river, the sediment being scoured away. “A ship,” she whispered. “An old iron ship?”
A second bolt of lightning struck. It was night. There was only a sliver of moonlight to see with. A woman had her by the wrist, leading her toward the hill. Two boys were dragging a small wooden boat from a cave they’d excavated in the sand.
“It’s a lie,” she protested.
“It’s the truth,” he said. “Your truth.”
She’d ceased struggling now, her mind adrift. He continued to hold her tight, perhaps because he couldn’t trust her. But as her legs began to shake, she felt he was holding her up, keeping her from buckling right then and there.
The memories continued to come. Men chasing them. A gunshot ripped through one of the containers. The water was spilling out. Disaster.
“There’s not enough water,” Calista spoke aloud.
More gunshots. The woman fell.
“They shot her,” Calista said to no one.
“She was wounded,” Kurt replied softly. “But it was superficial.”
“She fell down the hill.”
In her mind, Calista heard the woman shout.
“Olivia!”
Calista felt only fear—terrible, swirling fear.
“Mum!” one of the boys had yelled.
“Olivia, hurry!”
More gunshots sounded and the woman turned and ran. Calista just stood there on the hill, while down below, her mother and brothers pushed the small boat out into the water. She saw them climb on board and paddle into the darkness, moving swiftly with the current. She felt the men rush by her, watched as they scrambled down the bank, and listened as they fired again and again into the dark.