Rogers pushed open the heavy metal door to the conference room on the seventeenth floor. Inside, her associates looked up expectantly. Their dress shirts were unbuttoned at the collar, and their ties loosened. Suit jackets hung from the backs of chairs. The large, polished, wood-grained table they were using was nearly covered by notebooks, loose documents, and Styrofoam coffee cups. Their expressions became subtly hostile as Markman, wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt, followed her in. Agent Brian Hall broke off his discussion with the man beside him as they took their seats.
Rogers straightened her gray dress jacket and gave a quick, flat smile to her associates. "Gentleman, we've had some good developments in the past twenty-four hours as well as some disturbing ones. I'm sure the intrusion into my apartment means the pressure must be on them. Let's start with that. Al, has the lab come up with anything yet?"
A slight man with thinning blond hair sat up. Like the others at the table, a red security badge hung from the lapel of his suit jacket. The name on it read, "A. Simmons.” He fidgeted with a pencil on the table top as he spoke. "Ah, well yes, we have found something besides the suitcase, but you're not going to like it."
"Okay. Let's have it."
"There's prints all over the place, a dozen or so. It's as if they didn't care."
"Whose prints?"
Simmons paused. "Okay, we've identified prints from a half dozen people so far, but we haven't been able to locate any of the owners. Most of them are street dwellers, people that don't stay in one place too long. That's probably why we haven't picked any of them up yet. But that's not the troubling part."
Simmons discarded the pencil and rubbed one finger on the side of his nose. "The thing is this; one set of prints belonged to, they belong to Lee. I have no explanation."
A heavy silence came over the room. Markman looked to Rogers for enlightenment. She ignored him.
"What exactly was our last contact with Agent Lee?"
Simmons looked to the man sitting next to him. His brown hair was trimmed in a close crew cut, and the coarse features of his face made him look unfriendly. "His last message was keyed into our switchboard by cell phone. There was no voice contact at all. The message said he had successfully infiltrated the group and would contact us again when he was able. As you know, we haven't heard from him since."
Rogers wrinkled her brow. "Maybe he did get in. Maybe this is the only way he could let us know he's still on the inside. It's possible we have a deep cover here. Let's play it that way. Do everything you possibly can to help him and make it real easy for contact. This could be good. What about the smell? Did you come up with anything on that, Al?"
"I'm sorry, Ann. No samples, no traces, nothing."
"So how'd they get in?"
"We don't know that either. We're still blanketing the building. Clearly they were after you. They went straight for your quarters and even got the right room. Oddly enough, it’s also likely they did not know Markman was there. There was no particular interest in his room, even though they had missed him by only seconds. Their intelligence gathering is just as erratic as their actions, and yet they managed to identify and find you, as impossible as that seems."
Rogers's voice became irate. "A dozen individuals enter a secured building, and we still don't know how? You're kidding me."
The room remained quiet.
"Gentlemen, that is unacceptable. I expect an explanation by this afternoon." She paused and looked sternly over the room. "Okay, the briefcase, then. Let's see it."
Simmons's raised his eyebrows. He bent over in his chair and brought up the briefcase that had been left in Rogers's apartment. He unlatched it and lifted the cover, then glanced around the room to make certain everyone could see.
"Now of course the composition-four explosive has been removed, and we've replaced it with clay to simulate what you would see if you found one of these. It's a very simple mechanism actually. On the left side of the case, you see the countdown timer. It's run by this standard nine-volt battery, and the detonators work off of the circuit next to it. It's got a separate, special, high-voltage squib-type battery that mixes when the timer hits zero and that initiates the detonators. It's made to be set off by remote control. This wire here running around the inside of the case is the antenna. It feeds this circuit next to the countdown timer. When the signal is received, or the case's Plexiglas cover is removed, the nine-volt battery gets switched on, and the sequence begins. Apparently they planned to detonate this thing from somewhere nearby. It's lucky we found it as quickly as we did. It has a two-second delay. It's a nice, neat system, but they made a mistake."
Simmons looked up expecting questions. There were none. "You see, they put this Plexiglas cover over the whole thing, and there's this little micro switch here at the left back corner. It's supposed to be that if you remove the screws and lift off the Plexiglas, the microswitch closes, and boom, you're done for. But this device is actually very simple to disarm. You remove the two screws here on the front corners and then the one on the right rear corner and you can move the Plexi with the left back screw acting like an axis. You just rotate the Plexi around and the switch stays held in place. Then you simply reach in and unclip the nine-volt battery and that's it. You're safe. You would want to bring it right in, of course, for a complete neutralization."
Rogers broke in. "If anyone doesn't understand the procedure, see that you get it straight before you leave. Everyone here needs to know it. We believe this is the same type of bomb that brought down Merrill's aircraft. Any of us could encounter another just like it, so be prepared, gentleman." She paused for emphasis.
"Okay, next item. I've read the workup on your long shot, Anders. Why are you so sure you've found somebody on the run from Inkman?"
A studious-looking man sitting next to Markman leaned forward in his seat. He was young and wore wire-rimmed glasses that he repositioned on his face. His plain, blue sports shirt seemed inappropriate. His voice was calm and persuasive. "I don't consider this a long shot at all, Ann. We got real lucky on this. One of our people over in Jersey brought in a small-time con who was using the credit card of a recent murder victim. This guy wanted to plea-bargain real bad. He said that he purchased the card from another ex-con named Mick Pursley, but that we'd never find him because he was in hiding from somebody named Inkman. When our agent put the report into his computer, we already had a systemwide flag out for anything that came through with the name Inkman, so it came up on our terminals almost immediately. We backtracked and checked on all of the cards stolen from this particular victim. There was only one other and it was used recently to purchase a round-trip ticket to Mexico. The return flight gets in this afternoon at three-fourteen."
"So you plan to greet him at the airport, I assume?" asked Rogers.
"Well, it's not quite as simple as that. We're not sure it's the ex-con who's doing the traveling, and the guy we have in custody says he never saw this Mick character in person. The card was sold through a drop-off and pick-up arrangement. We've got nothing in records on a Mick Pursley. It's got to be an alias."
"So we know when he's coming, but we don't know what he looks like, is that what you're saying?"
"That's it. We'll try to contact the flight and get a description, but flight three-forty-two is traveling light. Our man probably won't sit in his assigned seat. We can't detain over two hundred people when they debark, so at this point we're open to suggestions."
"I have one," said Markman unexpectedly. The atmosphere in the meeting chamber again became hostile. Rogers dampened it by casting a cool stare at her subordinates.
"Yes, Scott, go ahead."
"Have Inkman greet this guy when he arrives. If he's so afraid of the man, it's bound to get a reaction."
The stocky agent with the crew cut stifled an inappropriate laugh. He spoke with sarcastic humor. "What'd ya suggest we do, give Inkman a call and ask him to meet us at the airport?" The man looked around the room with a smile to his ass
ociates. Rogers cut him off.
"I think what Scott is suggesting, Frank is that we provide our own version of Inkman. You can follow that can't you?"
A strained look came over the man's face. He sat up and shook his head cordially.
"Very good. Then you can make arrangements with Special Projects to find someone that can be made up to resemble Inkman in time to make the airport, right?"
The man's face became blank, as though he was uncertain whether the assignment was one of consequence or compliment. He continued to nod in approval. "Sure, no problem."
Rogers added, “I think I'll go along on this one. It sounds interesting. Okay, last, but not least. I'm sure you've all read with great interest Mr. Markman's dictated report on the Sensesuit."
"Cartoon land, eh, Markman?" called Brian Hall from the opposite side of the room. His tone was supportive.
"Not really. I watched another player die in there last night."
Silence.
Rogers spoke. "We have confirmed that someone in the Paterson area was killed last night. So far the description fits a Sensesuit death perfectly. They're still working it. The lab has been examining Markman's suit all night. No information is available for release yet. Any data that we come up with pertaining to your work will be disseminated by me as it becomes available. We don't have anything useful right now, and no decision has been made whether or not to use the suit again. That call will be made later. Okay, if there are no questions, that's it for now. Same time here tomorrow unless you hear from me before then."
Chairs rolled back from the table as the group began to leave. Simmons, the lab supervisor, remained seated. Rogers turned to Markman and spoke in a tone that begged tolerance. "Scott, I need to speak with Albert privately. Could you get a cup of coffee down the hall or something, and wait for me?"
Markman made no protest. He nodded and closed the door as he left.
Rogers stared intently at her nervous lab head. The man squirmed in his seat.
"Okay, Al, let's have it."
"Sure, but don't try to tell me I'm crazy."
Rogers narrowed her stare and made no reply. The man's voice rose slightly in pitch, sounding almost pleading. "It's alien!"
"What?"
"Yep, alien. That's all I can say. No way it's from anywhere on this planet, no way."
Rogers's voice became compassionate. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, it's a chip for one thing."
"A computer chip? What's so special about that?"
"No, I mean the suit. The whole damn suit is one big integrated circuit. So is the helmet."
"I don't follow."
"Hey, join the crowd. You put the suit together with the helmet, and you've got a computer like I've never seen. The thing's got more circuitry compressed in a single millimeter than some full stacks. The data buss', if you can call them that, are room-temperature superconductors. There are atomic-sized peripherals in every square millimeter of the thing. It takes a scanning electron microscope with special programming just to see most of it. It'll take years to analyze the thing, maybe never."
Simmons began to perspire and drew a white handkerchief from his suit jacket to wipe his brow. He shook his head in dismay and began again. "And there's more. Packed into the foam in the case, we found these other two pieces of equipment. One's horseshoe-shaped. It fits around the base of the helmet. The other is some kind of hand-held device. We think they are diagnostic stuff used to calibrate and repair the suit. Inductive links. No wires, but several outputs to connect to other stuff. It's bizarre."
"So what have you been able to do with it?"
"Oh yeah, that's another thing. Can't turn it on even if we wanted to. The thing is run by some central computer somewhere. I'd like to see that, I'll tell you. There's an antenna matrix of some kind in the helmet. That's where the power supply is, by the way--whatever it is. We think there's a power-generating element located in the base that isn't even on the periodic tables. Who the hell knows, not me, I'll tell you that. Anyway, the suit wants a transmission. That must be what happens at midnight. A central computer somewhere transmits a turn-on code, and the suit powers up. All the players meet inside this supercomputer, wherever it is."
"So if we get set up and send a man back in tonight, could you locate and track the signal to its source?"
"Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't bet on it, that's for sure. It could be they're using something as simple as pulse-code modulation, or it could be something completely beyond us. No way to tell."
"Well, if he goes back in tonight, let's set up for it, okay?"
"No problem. I'll get the vans ready."
Rogers smiled appreciatively. "Okay, that's all, Al. Keep at it, and let me know immediately if you come up with anything else. Have the suit packed and ready to go by nine o'clock tonight. Be careful not to damage it in any way. Keep up the good work."
The anxious engineer rose from his seat and gathered up papers that had been on the table in front of him. He looked fretfully at his boss. "I'll tell you one thing."
"What's that?"
"Whoever designed and built that thing could kick our asses any damn where they please. I wouldn't get back in it for all the tea in China."
Rogers made no reply. She sat in silent agreement and wondered if Scott Markman would.
Chapter 21