Saskia considered the isolation of the gas station and the anonymity of the phone. The surrounding land was flat and empty. She looked into the heights of sky, and thought about the cold stare of a satellite, and the colder eyes of Beckmann.
‘Yes.’
‘He told me that your former boss has sent a man to find you. Dad was visited by him last night.’
‘I see.’
‘Saskia? All’s well.’
She frowned at the horizon and her reply was spoken before she could think. ‘That ends well.’
Shakespeare.
‘Wait,’ said Saskia, but the woman hung up. Saskia called back but the phone rang without answer. She lowered the handset gently, though she wanted to smash it. The muscles in her face gathered like a fist. Someone whistled and she looked up. David was sitting at a picnic table on the opposite side of the lot. She collected her tear-diluted mascara on a knuckle and walked the windy gap between them and felt like a gargoyle as she perched on the furthest edge of the bench, waiting for the next rental car.
David studied her.
‘What are you staring at?’ she asked.
‘I’m debating if I should tell you something.’
‘Let me know whether the motion is passed.’
‘On board the aeroplane, when my computer brought the presence of your chip to my attention, I took a gamble and claimed that I could deactivate it. The truth is that I can’t. My computer doesn’t even recognise the communication protocol. It’s encrypted. You’re perfectly safe.’
Saskia turned to face him. ‘But you knew my name, my badge number.’
‘Just a skin of metadata wrapped around the unencrypted hellos and goodbyes your chip sends all the time.’
‘Sends where?’
‘The Internet.’
‘Maybe it’s my location. Did you think of that?’
‘I did, but consider the possibilities. If compressed, it could send the data of your senses across the Internet.’
Saskia took his coffee and sipped. ‘What is the taste of coffee, expressed as a number?’
‘Now you’re getting it.’
‘David, do you think I’m even here? Am I lying in a coma in a hospital in Berlin, or London, or Rio—relaying my soul chip-to-chip like…’ she looked across the forecourt ‘…a conversation?’
‘Easy to find out. We’ll get you a foil hat and see if you drop dead.’
She remembered the man in the foil hat from Heathrow. ‘No, thanks.’
‘I note that you aren’t calling for help.’
‘Perhaps I just did,’ she said, indicating the gas station.
‘The phone call? Yes, I noticed that. But Ego doesn’t think it’s something I need to worry about. He heard the whole thing. Sorry about your partner.’
‘Never mind that. Tell me about the woman who rescued you from the West Lothian Centre. Did she sound British?’
He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘Did she sound British, Saskia?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jennifer Proctor had worked late the night before. She woke at eleven, made coffee, swallowed her norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and checked her inbox. Then she took the elevator to the car park of her apartment building. The traffic was 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 afternoon,’ said a tall man. Nothing about him moved but for 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.’
‘I believe you. What do you want?’
‘One of our agents, going by the alias Saskia Brandt, has turned rogue. We think she’s targeted you. I’ve been assigned to provide you with personal security, should Brandt attempt to make contact.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Not at all. There’s a high likelihood she will make contact in the next hour or so.’
‘Well, there’s no need to worry about me.’ Jennifer nodded to the rocky column ahead. ‘She can’t follow me in there without an army. Neither can you, for that matter.’
‘A renegade agent from the FIB is treated seriously.’ He waved a blue ID badge. ‘I have a level one pass and full co-operation from Met Four Base.’
‘Man.’ Jennifer had never seen such a clearance. Klutikov had the keys to the kingdom.
‘We should proceed immediately, Dr Proctor. We -’
‘What?’ asked Jennifer. She followed his stare to the road, but she could not see or hear anything.
‘Get your car. You’re in danger.’
‘Danger?’ she said. Her fear was turning to pique.
Jennifer gasped as he put his hand into the pocket of her jeans. He pressed her key fob. In the corner of the lot, her car started. ‘When it 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 Base. 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. They had told her, in the early days, that something like this might happen. She hadn’t believed them.
Through the arch of the steering wheel, she saw Klutikov walk away. He flexed his right hand.
Saskia stood in front of her car. Her hair was redrawn gust by gust. She watched Klutikov’s eyes. Somehow, she knew that he 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 rested on the butt 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 constitution. 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?’
‘I don’t want the surveillance computer to eavesdrop. Things might get more complicated.’
He walked towards her, closing his badge with an easy flick. ‘Are you armed?’
‘Airport security confiscated my gun.’