Saskia Brandt: Deja Vu Part 20

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Jennifer Proctor rose at dawn, when the sky was blank, unwritten. She took the elevator to the subterranean car park of her apartment block. The traffic was already heavy, but manageable if she avoided the Strip. She read some paperwork while the car turned north, then east, then joined I-15 heading north-west. Twenty minutes later, she turned onto Route 169 at Crystal.

The road surface worsened as she entered the Valley of Fire State Park. Sunlight struck the red sandstone formations and they did indeed ignite, but Jennifer did not look up from her notes until she had reached Met Four, a weather station in the north of the park. The car dropped her at the base of a huge rocky column and, as she approached the iron steps, it parked nearby.

She stopped.

'Good morning,' said a tall man. Nothing moved on him apart from the tail of his coat. 'Dr Jennifer Proctor?'

'Who are you?'

His irises flared with sun. 'Detektiv Lev Klutikov. I'm with the European FIB. Here's my badge and a number you can call to confirm its validity.'

'What do you want?'

'One of our agents, Saskia Brandt, has turned rogue. We think she's interested in your research. I've been a.s.signed to provide you with personal security, should Brandt attempt to make contact.'

Jennifer nodded to the rocky column ahead. 'You can't follow me inside Met Four.'

'A renegade agent from the FIB is treated seriously.' He waved a blue ID badge. 'I have a level one pa.s.s and full co-operation from Met Four.'

'Man.' Jennifer had never seen such a clearance. Klutikov had the keys to the kingdom.

'Seems quiet,' he said. Then his moving eyes froze. 'Get your car.'

'What?'

Jennifer gasped as he put his hand into the pocket of her jeans. He pressed her key fob. 'When the car comes to pick you up, get inside and lock the door. Understand? Wait for me.'

'Is she here?'

'Brandt. Yes. She's watching us.'

'But I could hide inside the installation.'

Klutikov turned to the zigzag of iron steps that ran the full height of the column. 'You wouldn't make it.'

Jennifer's car stopped at her sneakers. She settled inside and threw the locks. She looked from Klutikov to the unreachable castle of Met Four. Would its cameras be trained on the car park? Certainly. But there were no human eyes behind those cameras, and a computer would only summon help if presented with overtly suspicious behaviour.

Jennifer sank behind the driver's wheel and planned. If something happened to Klutikov, she would run from the car. Her running would alert the computer, which would alert guards, who would come to her rescue. Perhaps she could make the iron steps before the agent reached her.

Through the arch of the steering wheel, she saw Klutikov walk away. He flexed life into his right hand.

Saskia's hair was redrawn gust by gust. She watched his eyes. Somehow, she knew that Klutikov had hacked his sight to detect electromagnetic radiation above and below the thresholds of mammalian vision. He could taste her heat. Sense the tell-tale metals at the heart of her ceramic revolver. She waited for him to scan her body and the car. Satisfied, he nodded and held up his golden FIB badge. His free hand perched on the b.u.t.t of his holstered gun.

In rapid German, he said, 'Frau Kommissarin Saskia Brandt, you are arrested by Detektiv Lyova Klutikov of the Federal Office of Investigation, Russian section, badge number 012-919-001, on the internal charge of desertion. This charge will be pursued under the Russian const.i.tution. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be recorded at the discretion of your arresting officer and reproduced in a court of law as evidence against you. These data are the property of the FIB.'

Saskia said nothing. Waited. Her hair licked her eyes.

'Did you hear me, Saskia?'

'Yes. Why German?'

'Obviously I don't want the surveillance computer to eavesdrop. Things might get more complicated.'

He walked towards her, pocketing his badge with an easy flick. 'Are you armed?'

'Airport security confiscated my gun.'

Klutikov drew her hair through his gloved fingers. Her scalp s.h.i.+vered. 'h.e.l.lo, Angel.'

'h.e.l.lo.'

'Our boss made a serious mistake with you.' He put the hair to his nose and sighed. 'After all, what qualifications do you have, apart from getting caught?'

Saskia turned her head up to his. 'You lied to me,' she said. 'In Berlin, you followed me because you were ordered to do so. The newspaper story was fake, wasn't it? There is no Angel of Death.'

'Oh, there certainly is.' He put an arm around her shoulders and suddenly his gun was at the soft meat below her sternum. She growled a breath and he pushed harder. His pupils were wide and black. 'Now, tell me again where you put your gun, and don't be,' he blew across her throat, 'clever.'

'Under the pa.s.senger seat.' She indicated with her chin. 'Let me get it.'

'No, I think I will.'

With his free hand, Klutikov opened the door. He put one knee on the driver's seat and reached across. Saskia, heaving a breath, hooked his back leg with her own and tipped him inside. At the same time, she shut the door on his forearm. His hand splayed and his gun dropped to the desert. Saskia tucked his arm inside and slammed the door. The locks clicked. Before Klutikov could sit, the car accelerated out of the car park and was gone, its dust thinned by the breeze.

David stepped from behind a van. 'Good work, Saskia.'

'Is the car still moving?'

David listened to Ego. 'He's already broken a window, but the car is travelling too fast for him to bail out.'

'How long do we have?'

'The car will be out of Ego's range in twenty minutes. Maybe Klutikov can overcome the car's computer. I don't know.'

Saskia nodded and crouched to take Klutikov's gun. Despite the satisfaction of besting him, she was uneasy about the questions that his appearance raised. Why had he been improperly briefed? He should have been told to expect two people, not one. If Beckmann had wanted to recapture Proctor, why would he limit Klutikov's effectiveness by restricting his information? Klutikov was eminently capable of retrieving Proctor. He was, perhaps, more capable than Saskia.

She pulled at her lip. No. Her reasoning was not correct. There was nothing to suggest that Beckmann had abandoned Proctor. Beckmann had simply tried to remove Saskia from the case.

She studied Met Four. The ghostly traffic of sand rushed about her.

Beckmann had changed his mind. If he did not want Proctor to be captured, that meant he wanted Proctor to reach his destination.

And his destination was his daughter.

'Come on, David.'

Jennifer's fingers trembled. She felt for the door handle and gripped it hard. She would make a run for Met Four.

No, she thought. Just drive away. Play it safe.

She touched a b.u.t.ton on the dashboard. The engine started.

'Car, take me home.'

But the rogue agent called Brandt was in front of the car, looking at her through the windscreen. The car switched to reverse, then stopped immediately. There was a man at the trunk. It was not Klutikov. This was a man she had last seen in New York.

'Park here. Unlock the doors.'

His face was older now, an extrapolation of the man who had cried with her on the steps of Wayne's College long years before. He was trying not to laugh. Jennifer stepped into his arms.

In the car, sealed from the airs, slow minutes pa.s.sed. Jennifer's attention s.h.i.+fted from her father to the rogue agent, and back again. The two sat on the rear seat. Jennifer pointed at the woman. 'Why would Klutikov lie about you?'

'He told you what you needed to hear. He wanted to return me to Beckmann, our mutual employer, for execution. '

'That doesn't explain his blue Met Four clearance.'

The woman nodded. 'It doesn't.'

'And you,' Jennifer said to her father.

'And me.' The lines on his face, which had recorded all his smiles and frowns, were deeper and browner than ever.

'What happened after I spoke to you, Dad?'

He sighed. 'It's a very long story, but I'm afraid that...Jenny, I killed a man. I'm on the run.' He indicated Brandt with his head. 'From her, actually.'

'Dr Proctor,' interrupted the agent, 'let me explain our position in brief. I was dispatched to apprehend your father. I did so, but he managed to exploit the situation and brought me here against my will. David had received a cryptic clue, from an anonymous benefactor, which directed us to this location. Does this mean anything to you?'

Jennifer looked through the windscreen at an expanse across which the devils spun. She turned back.

'I'm a physicist. But there are many technologies being developed in our research centre. One of them, Dad, looks like a recreation of your old lab from the West Lothian centre. The project manager has a crush on me and I got the royal tour. He told me that they're trying to reverse engineer some of what you and Bruce s.h.i.+moda did twenty years ago, before your technology went up in smoke. I...met a person inside the computer.'

Her father seemed to deflate. 'Jenny, Bruce s.h.i.+moda is the man I killed.'

'I know.'

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Their footsteps echoed on the iron stairs. Jennifer led, followed by her father, then Saskia. The top of the column was edged by an artificial parapet of rock. They stopped at a chain-link fence with an inset door. Next to its handle was a slot. Jennifer swiped her card and they pa.s.sed through. Met Four comprised two prefabricated buildings. An array of antennas and dishes sat on top of the first. Above the second, there were two flags: the Stars and Stripes and the pennant of the US meteorological office.

A man emerged from the first building. He was unarmed, but Jennifer knew that his colleague stood by in the second building with a sub machine-gun.

'Morning, ma'am,' he said. If he had said, 'Morning, miss,' then she would have had to go home.

'Morning.'

'Guests?'

'That's right.'

They entered the first building. Inside, it was unremarkable. A ranger sat behind a desk, his hands at keyboard. Nearby, a secretary placed some papers in a filing cabinet. Jennifer had walked into the same room once a day for more than a year. The woman and the man had never changed their positions.

'Good morning, Jim.'

'Morning, Jennifer. Who are your friends?'

'Professors Stiefel and Whitney from Caltech. They should be expected.'

Jim checked his computer. 'They are. Have a great day.'

'Thanks.'

Jennifer led them through a chipboard part.i.tion to a cloakroom. She placed her coat on a hanger and did a twirl for the microwave camera. Saskia and her father did the same. Jennifer told them to put her thumbs against the wood. Their nail beds glowed pink. Partial sections of her DNA were read and checked. Thanks to the work of Ego behind the scenes, they matched those held by Met Four. The floor sank. When their heads had pa.s.sed below the floor, a panel closed the top of the shaft. A gap appeared at their feet as the lift slid into a room.

'Where are we heading?' asked her father.

Jennifer studied her father in the growing brightness. When she had argued for improved computing support at a committee meeting the day before, she had ridden her anger hard, as always, and she knew its source. She had not shouted at the chairman but at her father. At her father, who had dumped her in a school in New York and left for England. But now, in his presence, her fury had died to an ember. He had given her the best education. For him, that was the first priority. It was his one true aspiration. He had put that aspiration above their relations.h.i.+p. He was a principled man.

'Through the looking gla.s.s, Alice.'

They said nothing the rest of the way. Nothing as they walked into the second building, nothing as they descended into the rock, nothing as they took their first steps into the research centre proper. When they had been walking for five minutes through low-ceilinged, busy corridors, Jennifer opened a door marked 'Project N25136 (Looking Gla.s.s)'.

Jennifer opened her eyes. She was in orbit around the virtual planet. Clouds wheeled across oceans that glistened in the light of the local star. The vapour met her as she pa.s.sed through. Beneath were mountains, forests, and the trails of great rivers. Further she fell. She turned to her right and saw the sun set behind the planet's belly. Two evening stars fell with her: Saskia and her father. They stopped in water at the base of a ravine that ran north-south into the foothills of a mountain. It was widest at her point of landfall. To her right was an expanse of s.h.i.+ngle, which reached out for a kilometre before meeting the wall of the ravine. At its face was a little hut. It was crude but solid. From this distance, nothing could be seen but for the bonfire set before its porch. It produced a weak, s.h.i.+fting light.