“You know your quotes.”
“I know military history,” the Kid said, and I noted that he changed the phrasing. He didn’t say, “I know my military history,” which would have been the natural comeback. I filed that away for now.
“Where are you?” he asked. “Are you close?”
“Close enough. You got a name, Kid?”
“Eighty-two.”
“What?”
“That’s my name. But Alpha sometimes calls me SAM.”
“SAM’s a name at least.”
“No,” the Kid said, “it’s not. It means something, but I don’t know what. Alpha calls a lot of us ‘SAM.’ ”
“Who’s Alpha?”
“My father, I guess.”
“You’re not sure?”
“No.”
“Is Alpha his first name or last name?”
“It’s just a name. He makes everyone call him that. Or Lord Alpha the Most High. He’s always changing his name.”
“What’s his real name?”
“I don’t know. But he sometimes goes by ‘Cyrus Jakoby.’ I don’t think that’s real, either.”
The name Jakoby rang a faint bell with me, and I signaled Top to confirm that this was all going straight back to Church at the TOC. He gave me a thumbs-up.
“Does Alpha run this place?”
“Him and Otto. But they’re not here right now.”
“Who’s Otto?”
“Otto Wirths is Alpha’s — I don’t know — his manager, I guess. Foreman, whatever. Otto runs all of it for Alpha. The Hive, the Deck… all of it.”
My pulse jumped. Otto Wirths. There had been a reference to a “Herr Wirths” in Mengele’s letter. Could this guy be related? There had to be some connection. We were actually getting somewhere, though I still didn’t know exactly where. Bug kept scanning the woods around us for thermal signatures, and the readings stayed clean.
“How old is this Otto character?”
“I don’t know. Sixty-something.”
Too young to have been at the camps. Son, nephew, whatever.
I glanced at my team. They were all listening in and I saw Bunny mouth the word, Eighty-two.
“Why don’t I just call you Kid for now? A call sign. You know what that is?”
“Yes. That’s okay. I don’t care what people call me.”
“And you’re sure no one else can hear this call?”
“I don’t think so. I made this radio myself. I picked the frequency randomly before I sent that e-mail.”
“Smart,” I said, though in truth anyone with the right kind of scanner could conceivably find the signal. However, they would have to be looking, and in the digital age not as many people scan the radio waves. Even so, I said, “Okay, Kid. Call me Cowboy. No real names from here on out.”
“Okay… Cowboy.”
“Now tell us why we’re here. What’s this all about?”
A beat.
“I already told you—”
“No, Kid, you sent us a video with almost no audible sound. We saw the ‘animal,’ but that’s all we know.”
“Damn!” the Kid said, but he put a lot of meaning in it. “You don’t know about Africa? About Louisiana? About any of it?”
“No, so tell us what you want us to know.”
“There’s not enough time. If you come get me, maybe we can take the hard drives. I’m sure everything’s there. More than the stuff I know about. Maybe all of it.”
“You’re being a bit vague here, Kid. If you want us to help you, then you have to help us out. We know where you’re broadcasting from, but we need some details. Are there guards? If so, how many and how are they armed? Are there guard dogs? Electric fences? Security systems?”
“I… can’t give you all of that from here. I’ll have to sneak into the communications room. I can access the security systems from in there and can watch you on the cameras.”
“Go for it. How long do you need?”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “Once I’m in there I’ll have to lock myself in. They’ll know I’m there. They’ll break in eventually. If you don’t get here by the time they get to me, then I’m dead.”
Kid had a point.
“Terrain’s rough. It’ll take us forty minutes to get to your location safely. How far out are the first cameras?”
“Six hundred yards from the fence.”
Top held out his PDA. He magnified the satellite display of the compound so we could see the thin lines of a double fence.
“Okay, Kid, what’s our best angle of approach? What will keep us safe and give you the most time?”
“I can’t describe it—”
“We’re looking at a satellite image of the compound. Describe a building and I can find it.”
“Oh. Okay, there’s three small buildings together on the top of a hill and a bunch of medium-sized buildings in a kind of zigzag line sloping down toward the main house.”
“Got ’em.”
“That’s all maintenance stuff. Come in on the corner of the fence. The camera sweeps back and forth every ninety-four seconds, with a little twitch when turning back from the left. I think it has a bad bearing. If you wait for it to swing to the left, you should be able to get from the jungle wall to the fence. The camera is angled out, not down.”
“That’s pretty good, Kid. Better get off the line. Contact me again when you’re in place,” I said. “And, Kid… good luck.”
“You, too.” He paused, then added, “Cowboy.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Otto Wirths sat on a wheeled stool and watched as Cyrus Jakoby’s fingers flowed over the computer keys. Cyrus was the fastest typest Otto had ever seen, even when he was writing complex computer code, inputting research numbers, or crafting one of the codes they used to protect all of their research. It was hypnotic to see all ten fingers merge into a soft blur that was streamed like water. Otto found it very soothing.
They were at their shared workstation, which could be invisibly networked to any and all stations here at the Deck or at the Hive but which could also be hidden behind an impenetrable firewall when the need for secrecy was greatest.
Like now.
The sequences Cyrus was currently writing were the distribution code that would be sent to key people positioned around the world. People who were poised to accomplish certain very specific tasks. Some would begin the distribution of bottled water as part of the faux promotional giveaway to launch a new international competitor in the growing bottled-water market. The company was real enough, and there were several hundred employees on the payroll who truly believed they worked for MacNeil-Gunderson Water-Bottling. Legitimate advertising companies had been hired to create a global campaign for the release of the water under a variety of names, including Global Gulp, GoodWater, Soothe, Eco-Splash. Celebrities had been hired to endorse the water, including two Oscar winners who were widely regarded for their support of the environment and a dozen professional athletes from six countries. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of the water had been promised to fledgling sports teams in developing countries and in the inner cities throughout the United States. After the initial “free giveaway,” a portion of the regular sale price of the water would be donated to several popular ecology groups. Those payments would actually be made… until the world economy began to collapse and chaos set in. The IRS could audit any of the companies connected with MacNeil-Gunderson Water-Bottling and every cent would be accounted for.
Another group of key people would receive a code command from Cyrus to distribute bottles of water at specific locations throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas. And then there were the operatives who would dump gallons of pathogen-rich fluid directly into rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.