Chapter Thirty-Five
Diana could almost smell her own anxiety, sharp and pungent, like the inside of a tin can. When she unfroze the screen, Jake’s avatar continued to sit there like a department-store dummy. But Daniel was beyond noticing. He was tabbing through the mill’s surveillance screens.
Diana did her best to stay in character and end the meeting quickly. She transported Nadia home. Then she watched over Daniel’s shoulder as he checked the stills being fed by cameras positioned inside and around the mill—the outer gate, hallways, loft spaces, stairwells, the loading dock. There was nothing to see. The final feed was pitch-black—the first-floor corridor with the windows boarded over.
“Why don’t you switch to infrared?” Diana said.
Daniel clicked the sun icon, turning it to a moon, and the image changed. Now there were bright green mottled shapes, the rough outlines of people.
“Shit. Who the hell . . . ?” Daniel said.
Two of the figures looked as if they were crouching. Just the top of a third was visible creeping beneath the camera. Another was captured midway up the steps. A fifth looked as if it was far away, just entering the corridor to the loading-dock platform.
When the image refreshed, there were only three figures.
“I don’t understand how they’re getting in,” Daniel said. “That door is supposed to be locked. And if they broke in, there’d have been an alarm.” He sprang to the wall of the silo and checked the keypad. “They’ve got the code.” He gave her a long hard look.
“Daniel, I’ve got no access to the outside world. On top of that, I haven’t got your security pass codes. What about this door?” She indicated the door to the silo. “Is it still armed?”
Daniel checked the door itself. “It is for now. But just to be sure . . .” He slid a metal bolt into the jamb.
“Who’s got the pass codes?” Diana asked. “The alarm company?”
Daniel gave her a pitying look, and she added, “So, just you and Jake?”
The image refreshed again. Now there were two figures remaining in the loading dock, both of them on the platform.
“That means they must have gotten to Jake,” Diana said.
Daniel’s eyes went wide. He glanced at the door. Checked his watch. Turned back to the video screen. Now the loading dock was empty of human figures.
“They don’t know where we are,” he said, “but it won’t take them long to figure it out.”
“What in the hell is going on?” Diana asked.
The infrared camera showed the first-floor corridor empty. Daniel switched to the feed from the camera in the adjacent stairwell. Two figures, like black shadows, moved up the stairs.
“They’re almost here. We don’t have much time,” he said.
“Daniel, who are they?” Diana asked. “And what are they looking for?”
Daniel hesitated. She could almost hear the question caroming back and forth in his mind: who to trust? That was the very question she’d asked at all the wrong times and come up with all the wrong answers.
Finally he said, “You heard what he said. Maybe it’s the FBI. And if it is, then they’re about to find what they’re looking for.” He looked over at the two computer servers.
“What they’re looking for is on the hard drives?” she asked.
He nodded.
“So delete the data. Haven’t you got a kill switch built in here somewhere? A digital suicide bomb that will overwrite everything?”
Daniel blinked at her.
“Or we can pull the drives and shred them. Have you got a media shredder?”
But Daniel was looking at the first-floor camera again. More bright green figures were moving through the inky dark.
“Surely you must have anticipated something like this could happen,” Diana said, though she knew the answer. As usual, there was no plan B, not for Daniel and Jake, masters of their little universe. They never believed that their plans could fail.
But with the likelihood of exposure staring him in the face, Daniel slumped in his chair. He rubbed his hand back and forth over his stubbly chin. “Christ. Years and years of planning. And then he can’t wait a couple of more days?”
Years. Diana was beyond aching. She went over to him and took his hand. She turned the palm up. “And these?” She touched a mutilated fingertip. “It’s not frostbite, is it?”
He waved his hands like the consummate magician that he was. “Anonymity. That’s all I ever wanted. For me. For the world.”
“But there was still DNA,” Diana said. “Each person’s unique identifier—”
“Linked, in a government database, with a name, an address, a Social Security number.” Daniel finished the thought, shaking his head in disgust.
“So you decided to discredit DNA by, what, scrambling the databases?”
He went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Only it doesn’t stop there. It’s never enough. Without anyone’s permission, the government routinely tests the DNA of babies and stores it . . . indefinitely. And do you know what they’re talking about now? Christ, in some places, it’s already happening. Embedding GPS chips in newborns. Soon, every minute of every day, they’ll know where you are.
“I knew I couldn’t stop them. But every dragon has its vulnerable spot. I keep poking. Here. There. Slowing it down and slowing it down—”
“Hoping that sooner or later humanity comes to its senses?” Diana said.
Daniel’s eyes glittered. “We’re going after the computers on satellites next. GPS depends on their alignment.”
“Every plane landing at Logan depends on their alignment,” Diana said.
“Hey, you gotta break a few eggs . . . Don’t you see? That’s why we couldn’t leave you out there. You were so close to figuring it out when we were so close to making it happen.”
He was so casual, so matter-of-fact about it. Diana felt as if she’d been sucker-punched. But this was no time for pointless self-pity. “Guess I’m an A student,” she said. “You taught me well. But why risk everything with ransom demands? You never used to care about money.”
“I still don’t. That ransom thing?” Daniel gave her a pained look. “That’s Jake. But he’s supposed to wait.”
The security panel, just yards away from them, was beeping. Truly startled, Diana jumped to her feet. Someone was entering the code to the silo door. What in the hell was going on? Even if Jake’s flight back was on time, he shouldn’t be there yet. She’d counted on at least another hour.
“They’re here already.” Daniel backed away from the door.
Diana recovered quickly. “You need to get away before they get in. Take the data with you.” She ran over to the computer servers and started pulling out hard disks, emptying the racks. Three. Five. Eight. Twelve of them—metal and plastic about as large as an oversize paperback book—littered the floor.
Daniel grabbed a backpack from under his worktable and began to stuff the media into it.
There was a long beep as the silo’s electronic door latch released. The door gave a fraction but the bolt held it in place.
Daniel stuffed the last hard disk into the backpack. The zipper barely contained them all.
“Go.” She pointed up toward the hatch high in the wall. “Hurry!”
The door vibrated as the person on the other side banged on it. Daniel strapped on the backpack and, without a moment’s hesitation, started up the wall, springing from rebar to rebar like a mountain goat.
Go, go, go. Diana watched him as she backed up against the door.
“Let me in!” It was Jake. Thank God Daniel hadn’t heard. Diana threw her weight against the door, slamming it shut and muting Jake’s voice.
Diana had turned back the system clocks, adjusted Daniel’s wristwatch, but she’d never expected Jake to arrive back at the mill two hours early. He must have caught an earlier flight home after what had been a routine meeting with Vault, hours ago, while Daniel was sound asleep and dead to the world.
“Hurry!” she shouted up to Daniel.
Halfway up, Daniel stopped and adjusted the backpack.
“What the hell is going on? Would you . . .”
Jake’s muffled voice continued speaking as Diana shouted over it, “Daniel, are you okay? Be careful up there. You could easily slip and—”
“Diana, stop it! I’ve done this a million times. I’m not going to slip.”
He climbed up to the hatch, reached over, and pulled it open.
With a mighty crash, the door was bashed in again, and in the silence that followed, Jake’s voice rang out, loud and clear. “Daniel! Are you in there? Open the goddamn door!”
Diana froze. She moved away from the door, pointing at it and looking up at Daniel.
Daniel sat astride the ledge to the outside, one leg out, one leg in. “Jake?” he shouted.
“What the hell is going on in there?” Jake called back. “Hey, would you open the door?”
“Think about it,” Diana said to Daniel, her voice a harsh whisper. “Ten minutes ago Jake was at a meeting in Bethesda. This can’t be him. Not unless—”
“Not unless the meeting was a sham,” Daniel said. “A setup. I knew it. But he couldn’t . . . He wouldn’t . . .”
“You said so yourself, his avatar was acting like Jake wasn’t even there.”
Daniel sat there for a moment, like he was trying to fit puzzle pieces together. Then he tossed the backpack outside and turned back to Diana. “Check camera seven. Now!”
It took her a moment to understand what he was asking her to do. She ran over to Daniel’s computer and toggled through the surveillance feeds until she got to the video feed from the ceiling-mounted camera overlooking the landing outside the silo door. The fish-eye lens exaggerated size of the top of Jake’s head.
“There’s Jake,” she said. “And there are two others. No, there are three of them.”
“For chrissakes, would you let me in?” Jake’s voice was barely audible.
“Who’s out there with him?” Daniel said.
“Who’s that out there with you?” Diana shouted through the door.
“What are you talking about? No one’s out here with me. Open the goddamned door!”
Daniel looked down at her. He had one leg out and one leg in, a picture of indecision—an emotion she could never remember witnessing in him before. All he needed was a little nudge.
“You saw for yourself,” Diana said. “At least six people entered the building. Now three of them are out in the hall with Jake.” She glanced at the screen. “They’re wearing dark jumpsuits and gloves. And they’ve got hoods pulled over their faces.”
BAM. The door trembled with the impact. The surveillance still showed Jake rearing back, about to bash the door again with an ancient copper fire extinguisher. BAM!
“Go! Get out here,” Diana cried up to Daniel. “They’ve got a battering ram. They’ll break through any minute.”
Diana cringed as the fire extinguisher crashed into the door again. The air inside the silo seemed to vibrate with the noise.
“Hurry!” she shouted. “This bolt’s not going to hold much longer.”
“Come with me,” Daniel said.
At first she couldn’t believe her ears. “What?”
“I said, come with me,” Daniel shouted.
This hadn’t been in the script either. “I can’t. I mustn’t. Daniel, you need me here to deal with these . . . these people.”
Daniel leaned down and extended his arm to her. “Come on. I’m not leaving without you.”
BAM. And a moment later, again. Soon the bolt would give and the door would fly open.
“Daniel, you have to go. Now. There’s no time. And besides, I can’t climb. It’s impossible.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course you can climb.”
She took a step closer to the silo wall.
“Come on. Don’t overthink it, babe.”
She looked up, thirty feet overhead, to where Daniel was effortlessly perched.
“I’m not going,” he said. “Not unless you come with me.”
Before Diana realized she’d made the decision to do it, she was on the wall, grabbing hold of the U-shaped end of one of the rebars. She stepped up onto another one at knee height and pulled herself up.
If she’d been the invincible Nadia, she could have done this easily. Dressed as Nadia, she’d have had a better shot at it. But Nadia’s leather jacket was on the floor where Daniel had been sleeping.
BAM. Then a clatter. She looked over, and though she couldn’t see it, she knew that a screw had fallen from the bolt or door hinge.
“Diana! Come on!” Daniel said.
She craned her neck and looked up. He sat on the ledge, swinging his legs, perched there like a lost boy.
He stretched out his arm to her. “I love you.”
The words struck her like dissonant chords. She swallowed tears. “You don’t, you know. I’m not even sure you can.”
Daniel looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “I need you.”
There. That was more like it. Daniel had faked his own death, erased his fingerprints, embarked on a plan to discredit DNA. But he needed a partner with at least one foot in the real world in order to set the stage for the mayhem he intended to unleash next. She’d robbed him of Jake. She was his last hope.
Just focus on the moment, she told herself as she climbed up to the next rebar. Grabbed a higher handhold. Then climbed higher. And to the next and the next, until she was halfway up the wall.
Again there was a crash, then a metallic screech, as if a hinge had come loose.
Diana froze. She clung to the wall.
“Come on! You can do it,” Daniel said. “You can do whatever you set your mind to.”
She started up again. “I’m coming. Wait for me outside.”
She looked up again and he was gone. When she reached the hatch, she heard Daniel outside, his footsteps on the metal platform at the top of the outside stairs. Waiting for her. Sure that she’d be by his side in moments.
“Sorry, Daniel,” she whispered. “You’re on your own this time.”
She held on to a rebar with one hand, and with the other, she slammed the door to the hatch shut and drove the bolt home. Then she hung there for a moment, panting.
From the other side of the hatch she heard Daniel banging. “Diana!”
“Go!” she screamed. “They’re here!”
There was another crash from below. “Daniel!” Jake’s voice was so loud it sounded as if he was in the silo. Looking down, she could see that the door had buckled. It was seconds from giving way completely.
Diana took a tentative step down to a lower rebar. The tables and chairs and computer equipment looked so far away. She hung on, disoriented, as the world pinwheeled.
She couldn’t lose it now. She had to center herself. Get a grip. Don’t overthink it, babe.
She stared straight ahead at the plaster wall inches in front of her nose, at the dimples and irregularities in the surface that were invisible from below. She envisioned the rebars, above and below her, studding the wall at regular intervals. They were goals, and hitting them would trigger jingling coins like the ones in the first video games she’d played as a kid. Each one she triggered would increase her point count.
If . . . no, when she reached the floor, she’d finish liberating the princess from the clutches of the trolls.