Protocol 7

PART ONE:

THE MESSAGE

OXFORD, ENGLAND

Simon's Apartment

Simon Fitzpatrick gazed into his tumbler of thirty-year-old scotch and thought about where he was, what he was doing—and, most important, what he was not doing.

“Jake,” he said to his constant companion. “You’re a son of a bitch.”

Jake regarded him with weary resignation. Clearly, he had heard it all before.

“But I knew that the day we met, didn’t I?” He tapped the glass against the polished surface of the burl wood side table and shook his head. “You’ve never been anything but honest with me.” He sighed. “No, what I actually have learned, after thirty years on the planet and ten years in this place, is something more: you have an excuse for being a son of a bitch—you have to deal with me every day. The rest of the world acts that way for fun.” Jake sighed again, making a show of his boredom. Then he hopped off the large ottoman that he had claimed as his own and padded into the kitchen to see if anyone had remembered to fill his food bowl. After a short pause he returned, looking disappointed but unsurprised.

Simon smoothed the fur on his Great Dane’s broad brow. The fire in the hearth was lovely; the scotch gave him an inner glow that was undeniable and terribly welcome. But it did nothing to relieve the cold, clenching anger that had been burning in his belly for days.

He couldn’t forget the look on the face of the UNED officer who delivered the news about his father’s fate. He had come to the door of the flat on a sunny day, hat in hand. “He was at his laboratory in…a classified location,” the officer told him, sounding oddly hesitant. “There was an accident. Unavoidable. Unexpected. And I’m afraid he sustained terminal injuries.”

Terminal injuries, Simon thought. The phrase kept repeating in his mind. As if he understood it. As if it meant something. Terminal injuries.

He had been promised details. He had been promised a swift “processing of the remains.” And then…nothing. Not a letter, not a package, nothing.

“Six weeks,” he said. “And not a word. They couldn’t care less about my father. Not Oxford University, not UNED, not even old friends I’ve known since elementary school.” He cupped the dog’s chin and lifted his eyes.

“Is he gone, Jake? Is he really dead?”

He got up and wandered through the apartment as if looking for an answer. It was a tidy three-bedroom flat not far from the university—a bedroom, a study, a guest room, and an octagonal dining room that looked out over a rolling green lawn. He had been here for five years, since his appointment as the department’s youngest full professor, and he loved it…but today, for the first time, it felt small, closed—confining.

He had to admit it—it meant nothing without his father.

He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and two fingers, trying to drive sleep away. He wasn’t ready to rest, not yet. He visited the bathroom long enough to splash water in his face and found himself staring at his own reflection: short auburn hair, a prominent chin and a strong, thin-lipped mouth that smiled easily—though not tonight. He was handsome enough, he supposed; he had heard women talking about him when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. It was his eyes they spoke about most often—deep, cobalt eyes that were staring back at him now with something like a challenge.

What are you going to do about it, he kept asking himself. What?

It was nearly midnight when the front door bell rang. Simon jumped in surprise and almost yelped, “What the hell?” at the empty air, then cursed himself for his nerves. Jake was even more disturbed by the noise; he barked like a hound from hell until Simon spoke to him sharply and put a comforting hand on his burly shoulder.

The deep bell sounded a second time, and a slightly hoarse, amused woman’s voice spoke to Simon from the empty air. It was his personal Artificial Intelligence unit—a disembodied voice that monitored most of his communication and acted as his personal assistant. During the past two decades, AIs had become commonplace and were intertwined with almost everyone’s life, in one way or another, much to Simon’s dismay.

“Jonathan Weiss,” the voice said. “An unexpected visit.”

Simon sat up straight. “Bollocks,” he said. “He’s in America.”

“In fact,” the voice said, “he is on the front porch and looking rather impatient.”

Simon jumped up and almost ran toward the apartment’s front door. “Shall I let him in?” the voice asked—always at his ear, right behind him, no matter what room he was in. He had grown so accustomed to her that he had named her after his mother—Fae.

“Just leave him alone!” he said. “Go away! I’ll handle it!”

“No need to be snippy,” the voice said.

“No need to be a wanker,” he retorted, half under his breath.

“I heard that!”

“Good!”

Simon pulled the huge front door open in one long sweep, still half-believing that his assistant had made an error. Although Fae was remotely wired through the entire house, Simon wondered if he should pull up the menu on the holographic screen that controlled the AI’s functions, just to be sure. AIs had come a long way since the first self-aware Artificial Intelligences had been born, but they still made mistakes. He had been trying to get a hold of Jonathan since the bad news had first arrived, but his old friend hadn’t bothered to respond.

Why would he come now, he wondered, without even calling? How had he come, given his position at the United National Enforcement Division and the current craziness of the Antarctic Quarantine? It just—

Jonathan Weiss stood like a granite statue on the porch, rain streaming onto his shoulders in buckets. He wore a no-nonsense snap-brim hat and a gray canvas raincoat that made him look like the stolid, solid operative he had been for years.

He really does look like something out of an American TV show, Simon thought as he regarded him. “Jonathan Weiss: CIA.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.

“Well, hello to you too, you limey bastard,” Jonathan growled, though he couldn’t keep himself from cracking a smile.

Simon grinned in response. “Shut up and come in.” Jonathan stepped forward and they embraced like the old friends they were. They had been roommates in college, close friends ever since. It was an unlikely friendship, but it had survived time and distance better than most marriages.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said into his friend’s shoulder. “You know that.”

“I know. I know.”

They finally let each other go and walked down the hall together toward the cozy sitting room.

“Welcome back, Mr. Weiss,” the disembodied voice said.

“Thank you, Fae,” Jonathan said.

“Shut up, Fae,” Simon said. He half-whispered to his friend: “I hate that machine, you know.”

Jonathan couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “She’s not a machine, Simon; she’s a fully sentient artificial intelligence. And if you hate her so much, why don’t you just turn her off?”

“What, and miss all the fun?”

“Indeed,” Fae said as they entered the sitting room. “Who would make all the decisions around here?”

“Who would make my life a living hell?”

“Exactly.”

“God, you two. Like an old married couple.”

Jake was waiting for them on the overstuffed couch; he greeted Jonathan like his own long-lost brother, and Simon was happy to indulge the two of them in a well-deserved reunion. Only then did Simon notice the carefully applied bandages on both of Jonathan’s hands.

“What happened there?” He nodded at Jonathan’s stiff, white-wrapped fingers.

“Frostbite,” Jonathan said shortly. “Not as bad as it looks.”

“Ah. I bet there’s a story behind that.”

Jonathan didn’t look at him. “I bet there is.”

Simon smiled and shrugged. He had heard answers like that from his old friend for years. After all, Jonathan had been working for intelligence agencies—first the CIA, now UNED—for most of his adult life. There were plenty of stories he couldn’t share, and Simon had accepted that long ago. He moved his exercise bag off the armchair and took a seat himself, stretching his long legs out in front as he waited.

Jake was finally content to share the huge leather couch with his companion, and Jonathan settled down, his hand on the dog’s side, idly stroking his brindle coat as the old friends chatted about the trip, their work, even the awful weather. After a few minutes, Simon stood and crossed to the decanter of ancient and wonderful scotch, poured a neat one for his best friend and topped off his own as well. It was one of the many things they shared: a deep love of the single malts, the older and mellower the better.

Jonathan winced as his damaged hand wrapped around the glass. They both chose to ignore it. Then he took a long, slow sip of the liquor and smiled as if the gods had blessed him. “My god, that’s good,” he said. “Really.”

Simon found himself wondering how long it had been since he had actually seen Jonathan in person. Eight months? Ten? The handsome guy hadn’t changed a bit, at least not externally: the short dark hair, the eyes so brown they were almost black, the square jaw and full mouth that made him look like an American hero to many, many women. But there was something about him—a weariness, a tendency to react just a half-second later than he should have—that was different. Different and disturbing.

“You better get to it,” Simon heard himself saying.

Jonathan pretended not to understand. “Get to what?”

Simon sighed. “It’s 2039, Jonathan. Amazing technology at your fingertips: cell phone implants, tele-presence, holo-files, even five-level encryption that your buddies back at UNED couldn’t break.”

Jonathan scowled. “Don’t count on that,” he said.

“You know what I mean. And still, you hop a flight or a train or a camel from…wherever the hell you were…and come here to see me in person. So, what’s up?” He sipped at the scotch again and raised his eyebrows, waiting.

Jonathan didn’t answer him directly. Instead he paused for a second and then raised his head to face one of the discretely mounted cameras in a dark corner of the room. “Fae,” he said, “do you remember that little trick I taught you last summer?”

“I think I know what you’re referring to, Jonathan,” Fae said in her deeply mellow voice. Simon had programmed her to sound just like Diana Rigg at the age of thirty in her Avengers heyday. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Procedure Kappa Alpha Poindexter, then,” Jonathan said.

Simon heard the oddest sound: a pop and a hummm that came from no direction and all directions at once, then quickly cycled up the audible sound-spectrum until it seemed to fade away…or fill the room. “What the hell?” he heard himself say for the second time that night.

“It’s an anti-eavesdropping widget I installed in Fae last time I was here,” Jonathan said. “Sends out a field of white noise that effectively kills every kind of bug, either live-feed or recording, within twenty meters. All they will hear is a muffled hiss until I tell it to go away.”

“Are you saying my home is bugged?” Simon was astonished. “Someone is listening to me?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Simon. Someone is always listening these days. You know that.”

“It’s that serious?”

Jonathan’s weariness showed through far more clearly now. He put the half-finished scotch on the end table and nodded. “Yeah. That serious.”

He stood up and paced to the fireplace, thinking deeply.

“I have a message for you,” he said.

Simon frowned. “From whom?”

“Your father.”

A long, cold moment passed. Simon felt a gulf opening between them. “My father is dead,” he said shortly, surprised at the anger in his own voice.

Jonathan, uncharacteristically hesitant, looked at a spot on the carpet midway between them. “Yes, that may be, but—”

“May be, Jonathan? May?” He leaned forward, doing his best to hold in his rage. “Oxford told me he was dead. The British Diplomatic Corps told me he was dead. Even your own beloved UNED told me he was dead. None of them will give me one bit of detail—how he died, when he died, even where—but they all agree on that one bloody fact: Oliver Fitzpatrick is dead. Or is that a lie, too?”

Jonathan wouldn’t say. Simon recognized the expression; he’d seen that same mulish, stubborn secretiveness in the man since they had both met in college. It was one of the characteristics that made Jonathan Weiss such an accomplished investigator and operative. And Simon hated his friend for it, if only a little.

“Do you have a screen nearby?” Jonathan said abruptly. “Net ready?”

“Of course,” Fae murmured. It was common for most households to have virtual screens that could appear at will available in nearly every room. Like the AIs, they’d become standard over the past few years.

Bloody technology, Jonathan thought.

A black strip appeared in the rich wood surface of the end table between them; it buzzed very faintly, and a ghostly rectangle opened in the air above it. A beat later it folded out into a box almost as big as the table itself: a holographic display, ready for data. A virtual keyboard glowed into existence in a flat space at the edge of the tabletop, and Jonathan moved to the chair in front of it. His fingers flew.

Simon scowled at the entire display. “What, no secret microdot concealed in your shoe? No handwritten note scrawled on a bit of charred newsprint?”

“Oh, shut up, man. Sometimes you can be so British.” Jonathan reached into the cube and navigated the data by hand, moving to one particular site he had keyed in. “I’m trying to do you a favor here.”

Simon stood over his friend’s shoulder as the hologram blossomed. He nearly dropped his scotch when it revealed a gaudy pink-and-silver fantasy landscape, filled with kittens, dinosaurs, and unicorn ponies.

“What the hell?” he said. It seemed the phrase was becoming his new slogan.

“A little data-espionage tip,” Jonathan said over his shoulder, without looking at him. “These massive multi-player role-playing games, especially the ones for children, are wonderful places to hide data. There are literally millions of children online at any moment, all doing something silly, so many of them with so much content changing all the time that even the spy-nets have a hard time keeping track of it all. And even if one of them stumbles on an encrypted or password-protected file, they don’t bother cracking it—they’re kids. Besides, they can just move on to some other game or character or pinky-blue fairy-thing that’s easier to talk to. There’s just so much.”

He wandered through the over-bright, slightly ridiculous landscape until he came to a cartoon treasure chest with a big blue padlock. “There we go, ItzyBitzyVille,” he said. He tapped the keyboard and gave the hologram a gentle fingertip-shove. The lock popped open. Then, with a single deft stroke, he lifted the lid to reveal a glittering black diamond inside.

“Give me the word,” the diamond said.

“Carmel corn,” Jonathan said.

“Oh, god,” Simon groaned.

“Shh!” Jonathan tapped a five-digit number into the virtual keypad. The diamond turned white and asked for a second password.

“Camembert,” Jonathan said in a strangely hushed voice…

Suddenly, the hologram went black. The fantasy landscape was gone completely, replaced by a flat black cube that swirled for a moment, and then coalesced into the three-dimensional representation of a human head—a particular human head.

A bolt of ice-cold dread cut through Simon. The image was Oliver Fitzpatrick, Simon’s father. And he looked…strange.

Jonathan tapped the PLAY icon at the base of the image and sat back.

“Whoever sees this,” he said, “If anyone does, please get it to my son, Simon Fitzpatrick.” He reeled off Simon’s public e-mail address and his geographical address in the Physics Department, Materials Science Division, at Oxford. “Thank you.”

Always the polite one, Simon thought remotely. I don’t think he can help himself.

The image of his father moved a fraction closer to the camera, nearly filling the screen. He was clean-shaven, smiling; he seemed well-rested and well-fed. At sixty-eight, his father had always been the picture of the twenty-first century English gentleman: impeccably groomed, eternally charming. And that was still true. In fact, he seemed to be doing remarkably well for a man who was supposed to be dead. His eyes were clear and bright, his skin smooth and glowing. He even had a little color…

…A little color in his…

Simon found himself leaning forward and squinting at the image, trying to will it into even greater clarity. “Jon,” he said, half-surprised at the sound of his own voice. “Jon, is he wearing makeup?”

Jonathan frowned at the holo and cocked his head. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I…I think he is.”

“Hello, Simon,” Oliver said, smiling straight into the camera. “I can’t tell you where I am because I don’t know where I am—not exactly, anyway. They call it Station 135. It is somewhere in Victoria Land, but I’ve never seen it marked on a map, paper or digital. And I probably shouldn’t even be telling you that. Ha. Ha.”

Simon felt an involuntary shudder go through him. That’s not how he laughs, he told himself. In fact, he doesn’t laugh at all. He’s not a grim man, not sour…but he’s not a laugher. And the three or four times I’ve heard him do it, it never, ever, sounded like that.

“You know some of the work I’ve been doing,” Oliver said. “It is still in the field of exotic materials science, just like yours, but…very different. But it’s going very well, very well indeed. Most exciting. And you needn’t worry about me. I’m fine. Really. I’m fine. So please, Simon—no matter what you hear, you needn’t worry about me. You understand? No matter what.”

And for the briefest instant—for less than a blink of an eye—Simon saw something underneath the blandly smiling face. A flash of steel, a glint of fear—something.

“He’s lying,” Simon said. “I know it. He’s lying.”

His far-too-cheerful father slapped his knees with great heartiness. “Well!” he said. “Enough breaktime! Back to work! No rest for the wicked, eh? Give my best to Leon, and I know I’ll see you soon!”

And with that, the image froze—just froze, leaving his father’s image smiling broadly and blandly, one hand suspended in the air, staring into empty space forever and ever.

A cold fear blossomed in the pit of Simon’s stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

Leon? Simon repeated to himself. Who the devil is…?

Then he remembered: a childhood vacation, a trip to the Island of Corsica…

No, he couldn’t possibly mean…him?

He turned to his old college friend, almost glaring at him. “How did you get this?”

“It was left behind for me.”

“Where?”

“In your father’s quarters. I found it on a chip there, so I uploaded it to ItzyBitzyVille and destroyed the original.”

“And where were these… ‘quarters?’”

“It doesn’t matter, Simon. He’s not there anymore.”

“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t matter?’ Everyone else is telling me he’s dead. This tells me he’s alive and well weeks after he was supposed to have—”

“I know what it says, man. Come on.”

“No, you come on!”

Jonathan put up a hand to calm his friend. “Look, I just wanted to give you a little comfort, that’s all. I can’t tell you any more than that. Even this much could put us both in grave danger. Just…just know that he’s okay—you saw him, he was fine.”

Simon shook his head stubbornly. “No, he’s not fine. Christ, Jonny, he was faking. You know him well enough to know that! He looked like a damn mannequin; he was wearing makeup for god’s sake!”

“That could have been the lighting. Or poor file res. It could have—”

“Jonathan, something is wrong. I’m incredibly glad you brought this to me. Just knowing he’s alive changes everything—everything. But…but this isn’t right. I need to know more.”

Jonathan looked at the carpet and nodded. “I know. And I can’t tell you. All I can do is give you this.”

He reached into the pocket of his tailored sports coat and pulled out a small book no more than five inches on its long side. As he handed it to his friend, Simon saw gold gilt glitter along the edge of the pages. It was a strangely old-fashioned thing, quaint and slightly mysterious.

Simon took it automatically and weighed it in his hand. It was about the size of an old-fashioned paperback, but denser, more carefully bound.

He suddenly realized what it was. “It’s a diary,” he said, almost to himself. “My father’s diary?”

Jonathan gave him a sad smile. “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

Simon opened the book and found a series of diagrams—notations that looked oddly algebraic but made no sense, grids of black and white boxes with figures and numbers squiggled inside, all in his father’s unique handwriting.

“It’s a chess journal,” he said to himself, more than a little taken aback. “My father’s chess journal.”

Oliver had been an avid chess player. He’d taught Simon how to play when the boy was barely old enough to reach the table, and they had spent endless hours together, at war on the black-and-white battlefield. But Simon had never known him to keep a chess diary. Even the idea of it seemed strange and slightly alien to him.

And now it was the only thing he had to remember his father. That, and an odd video message he somehow knew was a lie.

Jonathan took a small black memory card from his pocket and laid it on an illuminated patch of the tabletop. He touched a few glowing keys, then lifted his face and spoke to the household AI again. “Fae, did you record that feed?”

“Of course, Jonathan.”

“Then erase it, please,” he said as he picked up the black card. “Then erase it again, and then frag the sector. Make it completely unrecoverable. Then lift the Poindexter field. If you leave it on too long, it might be noticed.”

“All right.” The AI didn’t argue for a change; it simply did as it was told.

Jonathan’s fingers flew across the virtual keyboard. Simon watched as his old friend erased the video file, dissolving the black diamond that had been hiding in the treasure chest, and then dissolving the chest as well.

“What are you doing?”

“Crashing ItzyBitzyVille for a few hours. Don’t worry, it’ll come back. Wouldn’t want to traumatize the little ones.” It happened quickly, in little more than a dozen keystrokes.

“Haven’t lost your knack for hacking,” Simon observed grimly.

“Necessary tool of the trade, believe me.” When Jonathan was finished, the cube fell back into the black strip, and then the strip itself faded into the end table’s wood grain. It was gone in moments, as if it was never there.

As if the message itself had never existed.

“Mission accomplished, Jonathan.”

“Thank you, Fae. I always knew you’d make a fine operative.”

“Why, thank you.”

Jonathan turned to his old friend and held out the black card. “This is the one and only copy of his message to you. It’s not recorded anywhere else, not in the cloud or on a hard drive. Touch the corners of the card here and here, and it will project the holo in a meter-wide cube. Touch the other corners, like this…then confirm…and you’ll destroy the file forever. Real Mission: Impossible self-destruct stuff. Clear?”

Simon had been watching very closely. He nodded. “Clear.”

“And I don’t have to tell you not to send it over the net or try and make a copy.”

Simon shook his head. He felt numb from head to toe. “No, you don’t.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Jonathan stood and moved briskly, retrieving his raincoat and shaking out his hat, still damp from the downpour.

Simon got to his feet as well, surprised and a little chilled. “You’re leaving?”

Jonathan gave him a wry smile. “At the risk of sounding cliché…I was never here.”

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“Washington,” he said briefly. He wasn’t inclined to give details.

“Then what?”

He looked frankly at his old friend, his deep brown eyes glittering. “To tell you the truth, Simon…I really don’t know.”

He tightened his belt and turned away. “Walk me to the door,” he said.

Neither man spoke as they crossed the apartment. Simon knew better than to mention the video, not with the possibility of being overheard.

“I hope you’ll come back for a real visit soon,” he said as he put his hand on the front door.

“I will. At least, I’ll try. I just hope I was…helpful.”

Simon offered up a tiny, sad smile. “To quote a wise man, Jonathan, I really don’t know.”

Jonathan nodded. “Fair enough.”

He gave him a brief, heartfelt hug. “Soon, Simon.”

“Soon, Jonathan.”

He pulled away and ducked into the rainstorm. It had only grown worse since his arrival a bare hour earlier. But just before he saw his friend disappear into the night, Simon had a sudden thought. He threw himself into the darkness, ignored the pelting rain, and followed his friend into the drive.

“Jonathan! Wait!”

He caught up to him as he was opening the door to his anonymous black car. Jonathan turned to face him with an oddly guarded expression; one that said ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.

“Just one thing,” Simon said, barely able to hear his own voice over the roar of the rain. “Where is Victoria Land?”

Jonathan grinned in spite of himself and shook his head. “Geography never was your best subject, was it?” He focused his dark eyes on his oldest friend in the world. “Antarctica, Simon,” he said. “Next to the Ross Ice Shelf.”

Then he got into his car and drove away.

Simon stood in the storm for a long moment as the car drifted down the drive, taillights flaring as it turned and surged silently into the night. Then he turned and looked back at his apartment building.

It was one of four flats in an odd little two-story building—pink stone, white cornices, and a circular turret at each end for his octagonal dining room, all windows and wood. Fae had left the porch light on; he could see the flickering fire of the study in the window far to one side and the warm glow in the dining room in the windows of the turret. There was a twisting blue light coming from a window on the far side as well: his neighbor, Mrs. Ellingsworth, was still watching her “telly” late into the night. The multi-colored glow of the display twinkled against her rain-spattered window.

It should have been a comforting sight. He had come to love his digs; his apartment had become a true home for him—not an easy thing to accomplish for a childless, single man in his mid-thirties.

But it didn’t matter to him. Not now. All he could see was the image of his father, smiling stiffly, hiding something horrible behind his eyes. Ha. Ha.

He had to do something about it. He had to.