‘I don’t want to do this. I’m not responsible.’
‘Listen to me. I know you’re not a bad man. But you must understand.’ She took his chin and turned his head towards her. ‘My superior. The way he operates…’ She did not blink. ‘This chip contains me, the real me. Do you understand? I cannot…go back. I choose to remain like this.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘So what does Saskia Brandt mean?’
‘What?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
As the A380 rumbled into Chicago, Saskia avoided Proctor’s curious expression, though she felt its regard, and the bleeding edge of his pity. It was two o’clock in the morning. She collected the rounds confiscated by the captain and allowed a sky marshal—an ex-police officer—to escort them to the immigration control section, where the blind barrels of automatic firearms tracked them in a small room shared by Middle Eastern women and their children. Accents British, eyes downcast like Saskia’s. The marshal touched his cap and told her to go ahead and keep the handcuffs. Proctor guffawed and scratched his head. Her bound right lifted too. A salute, she thought, looking at the marshal, and thinking of Beckmann.
She sat in silence, motionless as the statue of Prometheus, and locked out the noise and constant motion of Proctor as he fidgeted, sniffed, and sighed.
Within half an hour, they were taken to a soundproofed room and left alone. Saskia bounced on the balls of her feet and rolled her neck. She shrugged her shoulders. She appraised the young immigration officer as he entered and closed the door. He read an element of her intention, but Saskia descended upon him before he could gather air for a shout. She punched nerve bundles in his chest and shoulders to undermine his strength, put her elbow into the notch below his ear, and caught his fall.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was sunrise before Saskia would speak to him. Proctor dozed in driving seat of the rental car, slightly reclined. His personal computer was in a dashboard cup holder. The Ego unit had instructions to deactivate Saskia’s chip if she did anything other than sit and wait. So she watched the dawn blaze on the landscape, flat as a page. Las Vegas was a ten-hour drive on I-70, but their counter-surveillance precautions would slow them. She saw a billboard slide by. It advertised Iowa sushi. She frowned. She felt empty. The flesh of her memory had been picked clean from her bones. Ahead, a truck’s indicator blinked. Beckmann had said something about epaulettes. She raised her fist and looked at the hurting, swollen knuckles. She wondered if her unarmed combat skills were intended for the use of harder, more robust hands than those she had grave-robbed.
Klutikov? He had large, good hands.
The traffic thickened. The car slowed into the human speed band, and its braking tipped Proctor forward. He widened his eyes, stretched his eyebrows, noted Ego still on watch.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘Professor.’
‘I told you to call me David. Where are we?’
‘Crossing into Nebraska.’
‘We’ve made good time.’
‘I’ve ordered another rental car to rendezvous with us at the truckstop in six miles. Our current car will follow us for a few miles.’ She looked at his white stubble. ‘As a double bluff.’
‘All this expertise comes with your new chip, does it?’
‘You’re talking to the chip right now. It’s not something separate.’
David looked as though he had said something rude. ‘What did you do with the guard’s uniform?’
‘It’s in the boot. Safer if I wear my suit instead. It fits.’
‘Saskia, I’m sorry.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘As soon as I find my daughter, you will be free to leave. I promise.’
She batted his hand away. ‘Do you want me to feel grateful? You give me up to a future where I will be hunted like you. To fail my first assignment is to die. My employer told me so.’
‘I’m doing what I’m doing for the best reasons.’
‘As they seem to you.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t even know where you’re heading.’
‘The plane ticket said Las Vegas, so that’s where. For now.’ David touched his forehead. ‘Of course. The paper from locker J371. It said, “Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest.” What do you make of that? It could be phrased like a cryptic crossword clue. They often have part of the answer in the question. One of the words may be an anagram of the answer.’
Saskia closed her eyes and pictured the letters. She thought, What are the anagrams? An instant later, she knew that ‘attendant’ had no rearrangements that made sense, while ‘finest’ could make ‘feints’ or ‘infest’.
‘I cannot find any likely anagrams.’
‘Wait. What’s another word for a car-parking attendant?’
‘You are the English speaker, not me.’
‘Ah, but you fake it so well. Another word…would be “traffic warden”, or “attendant”. No, we have that. Come on, Saskia.’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘It could be an American word. We’re in America. Valet.’
‘What’s a valet?’
‘Somebody who parks your car for you. Could it mean the best example of a valet, like a super-valet?’
‘What’s a super-valet?’
‘Like Superman, only cleaner.’
‘What?’
David sighed. ‘Never mind.’
‘Let’s stay with ‘valet’,’ said Saskia. ‘As for finest, in some online indexes of English word usage, it refers to a city’s emergency services. Usually the police, but sometimes the fire service.’ She felt his interest. ‘My chip can connect to the telecommunications network.’
‘Wow. Consciously, unconsciously? Can you see a webspace right now?’
Saskia closed her eyes. Her thoughts fluttered, trapped. She knew that the chip was background processing the relationships between ‘valet’, ‘fire service’ and Las Vegas, just as the semantic parser of the UK police had tracked Proctor’s emails.
She opened her eyes.
‘The clue must refer to the Valley of Fire National Park, on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Your daughter is there.’
Proctor laughed. ‘Well done that woman.’
‘This is the truckstop,’ she said coldly. ‘We have to change cars. Pull in.’
‘Computer, give me control.’
The car said, ‘You have control in five seconds, four, three, two, one. You have control.’
Saskia waited beneath a sign that warned of the dangers of hydrogen. She watched David enter the glass-fronted store and lost him in the reflected scrubland. Carefully, she lifted the handset and dialled. The British ringing tone made her think of Simon. Somewhere, perhaps in a zinc tray, a phone played ‘Scotland the Brave’.
‘Hello?’ asked a woman.
Saskia tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘May I please speak to Detective Jago?’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ she said. Her accent was British. Not Scottish, but English.
Saskia almost hung up. Then she said, ‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘I’m his daughter.’
Jago had only one child and he was called Jeremy. Saskia swapped ears.
‘My name is Sabrina,’ Saskia said. ‘I heard that your father had been taken ill. Could you please tell me how he is?’
‘He’s under observation.’
‘I see,’ said Saskia. She pursed her lips.
‘Are you still there?’
‘When he wakes up, tell him I’m sorry. Can you do that?’
‘…Wait.’
Saskia listened as the phone was handled.
‘There is something else,’ continued the woman. ‘Dad said that Saskia might call. He had a message for her. Is that you?’