Protocol 7

OXFORD, ENGLAND

Outside Simon's Flat

Simon never even made it inside his flat.

The cab dropped him at the curb just a few feet from the front entrance. He was raising his hand to cue the biometric lock when the waist-high hedge to his left suddenly trembled and hissed at him.

“SSSimon!”

He stopped short and turned, surprised. Without thinking, his body fell into a natural defensive posture: hands up, fingers half-curled into fists, one foot in front of the other, knees slightly bent. All those years of martial arts training instinctively took control of his body. He was ready to defend himself.

A shadow rose up from behind the hedge: slender and tall, narrow build, a fall of silver hair like wings on both sides of his face.

It was Hayden, wide-eyed and intense.

“Hayden!” Simon whispered fiercely. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Come with me,” he said softly. “We need to take a drive.”

“You’re drunk!”

Hayden cocked his head as if he was truly puzzled. “And your point is…?”

“I’m not going anywhere if you’re driving,” Simon told him.

Hayden spread his hands innocently. “Then you drive. I don’t give a rip. We just have to go.”

Simon thought about it for a second. He only had a couple of hours before he had to go to Ryan’s, and the long talk with Samantha had been exhausting. But…if Hayden wanted him, there was a good reason for it. He agreed.

He dropped his head in surrender. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s drive.”

Hayden’s odd little electrical car was parked unevenly at the curb, halfway down the block. Simon was unfamiliar with the controls, but it didn’t take long to adjust. Three minutes later they were slipping into traffic with much larger vehicles, but the Hayden-mobile zipped and maneuvered more like a sports car than a commuter-box.

Simon was astonished: the two-seater had incredible pick-up; it was almost like driving a turbo-charged internal combustion engine from the last century.

“You’ve messed around with this, haven’t you?” he said as they sailed down the highway, barely in control.

“Maybe a little,” Hayden said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Turn right here, please.”

“Here?”

“HERE!”

He dragged at the wheel and tilted into a hard right turn. The tires squealed at the strain.

“Where the hell are we going?”

“To a suburb in the north part of town,” he said. “Turn left at the next light.”

“Why—”

“I need to show you something, Simon. I’m not going to talk about it ‘til we get there, so just, for the love of Christ, drive, will you?” He took a pull at the bottle he had left on the floor of the front seat. “My god, I’m amazed I even made it to your flat in my condition.”

“Then stop drinking, Hayden!”

The older man goggled at him. “Damn, you are an old woman, aren’t you?” he said and took another swig.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled to the curb at a quiet lit corner in an anonymous suburban district. There was a fueling station on one corner, offering the usual array of hydrogen, electrical hookups, biofuels and even some hideously expensive fossil fuel. Across the narrow side street was a small tea shop and chemists, one of the vanishing breed of family-owned neighborhood everything-stores that used to fill the English countryside. And caddy-corner, near a small park, was an abandoned entrance to the underground. A lopsided gate, somewhat the worse for wear, blocked the grimy staircase that led down into the shadows. The mangled sign dangling from it read, “OPEN FOR CONNECTIONS, MARCH 2036.” Three years late, Simon thought. Just a bit behind schedule.

Hayden rolled out of the car almost before Simon had pulled to a complete stop; it was all the younger man could do to park and run after him. “Hey!” he called, still pitching his voice low. “Will you wait, please?” Hayden was heading somewhat unsteadily to the underground entrance. He passed the sign that named the station, but Simon couldn’t read it; it was completely covered with graffiti.

As he stumbled to the gate, Hayden pulled a huge rusted key from his pocket. It looked a hundred years old to Simon, at the very least, and it took more than a moment of twiddling and cursing for Hayden to fit it into the massive padlock on the entry gates and pop the lock open.

Hayden shoved the gate wide-open and bolted inside. He gestured for Simon to follow as he dashed down the steps of the old subway. There was a gate at the bottom as well; it took Hayden even less time to produce a different key and open another set of locks.

Simon closed the outer gate behind them and dashed down the stairs to join his father’s old friend…but he skidded to a halt beside him as Hayden pushed the inner gate open with a theatrical squawk. It was dead black inside; the lights had been turned off long ago.

Hayden turned to peer back up the steps, making sure no one was following. Simon could smell the stench of the street bums that lived in the area, but none were in sight. It was hard to see anything in the gloom.

“Hayden,” he said, “This is—”

There was a burst of blinding white light, strong and sudden enough to make Simon lurch back. Hayden turned to him and waved a powerful flashlight in his face. “Always prepared,” he said.

He turned and dove into the darkness. Scowling, and against his better judgment, Simon followed.

They trotted down a second series of steps, moving even deeper into the underground. There was a strangely linear gleaming light below and in front of them; it took Simon a moment to understand what he was looking at: the subway tracks, still clean and shining despite years of disuse.

“Hayden, where the hell are we going?”

This time Hayden didn’t look back. “Just follow, Simon.” As they trotted through the darkness, Simon noticed sections of the track had been disassembled. They were obviously in some long-abandoned section of the tubes, far from any working lines.

Hayden abruptly stopped, so fast that Simon almost crashed into his back. But he pulled up short as Hayden spun and shined the light directly into his face.

“Simon, you and I have never been here.”

He turned to the left and walked through a side tunnel that opened into what appeared to be a utility room. At the far end of the room was another door with yet another lock.

“Where did you get all these keys?”

“Where did you get all those questions?” Hayden muttered as if talking to Teah and pushed the third key into the third lock and turned it. He pulled the door open…only to reveal another door directly behind it. But this one was different than the others. It was newer, cleaner, and there was the dimly glowing box of a biometric sensor cut into it, almost like a small MRI with a three-dimensional scanner. It was so clean and new it seemed entirely out of place in the murk of the abandoned room.

Hayden placed his hand inside the device with an oddly casual air, as if he had done it a thousand times before. Simon saw a blue light flow out of the device as it read the entire form of the scientist’s hand.

It took only moments. The light flashed blue and then green, then the door popped open with a mechanical chunk. Hayden pushed through, gesturing for Simon to follow. “Stay close,” he said.

Simon could feel his heart pounding. They were in a short, dark corridor that led to one more door—this one with no lock at all.

“Where the hell are we?” he said again.

“It’s an entrance. A secret entrance, really. The fact is, there are much easier ways to get here, but this is the only one without cameras.” He belched quietly into his fist. “I think.”

“Hayden, what the hell are you talking about?”

The scientist looked him up and down as if he was making some kind of final decision. After a moment he nodded his head and pushed open the far door.

Simon took one step inside and stopped in astonishment.

The space was as big as a football field and taller than a four-story building. The ceiling was curved into a high dome, buttressed by arcs of dull gray material that looked like steel and plastic at the same time. The floor was concrete, but the vehicles and devices that filled it—cranes, haulers, transformers, and machines he couldn’t begin to understand nearly filled the space.

Above him, suspended from the domed ceiling, were three huge cradles. One cradle was empty; the other two filled, at least in part, with unfinished technology—a vehicle, Simon thought, and one that looked strangely familiar. Cables and scaffolding connected the two constructs; robots rode the cables and flitted through the air between them, in the midst of completing some impossibly complex assignment.

“This…this…”

“This is what I like to call the Spector safe house,” Hayden said with ill-conceived pride. “I invented it.”

Simon tore his eyes away from the panorama to look at his father’s close friend. “Spector,” he said. “The experimental submersibles. But I thought—you told me the project wasn’t even half-finished.”

“Oh, come along, Simon,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for more than twelve years. I’m the recipient of a Nobel Prize, I’ve received the Renssaelaer Award twice now, and I’m a Fellow at the most prestigious robotics college in Europe. Surely you don’t think I’ve gotten this far by lying around waiting, do you?”

He dowsed the flashlight and strolled easily farther into the room. He was clearly comfortable here; it was his home.

The robots and technology hummed and twittered around him as if they weren’t there at all. “The outer project—the one you knew about—is roughly seven years behind the inner project—this one. Over three hundred scientists and engineers from seventeen countries are working on the outer project. Inside? Only thirty-two people even know it exists.” He stopped and turned, then smiled, almost embarrassed. “Well…thirty-three now.”

Simon was nearly speechless. “But…why? Why keep it a secret?”

“Good Lord, Simon. Think it through. Do we really want the Chinese to know we’re this far along? Or the Russians for that matter? It’s vital that they think we are as far behind as the outer project seems to be. This isn’t going to be like the development of the A-bomb after World War II, or the space race—done in public, so unsecure that everyone knew what we were doing, where we were doing it, how far along…”

He stopped, pulling himself up. Simon wondered how many times Hayden had given that speech. “But…it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “Not now.”

“Why not?”

He blinked in surprise, as if the answer was obvious. “They shut it down. All of it.”

“What? When?”

“Three weeks ago. Right after the Antarctic Quarantine. Right after they told us both that Oliver was dead.”

He wandered into the room, tortured by the memory. “They took it all—the files, the fabricators. Cancelled the assembly contracts, diverted the shipments. They pushed me out, Simon. Me, the one who created it all! The one who built the entire Spector Project literally out of a hole in the ground! Twelve years of my life, six of yours, and the work of hundreds of other scientists, gone.”

“Why, Hayden? Why stop it when you’re so close?”

He shook his head, absolutely despairing. “I have no idea. None. Maybe because all they ever wanted from me was a prototype. Maybe because of something Oliver and the others did on their ‘special assignment.’ All I know is…they stole it from me, Simon. And god help me, I want it back.”

Simon’s mind was whirling. He had seen the plans for the Spectors. He had often wondered why it was taking so long to make one, even as he marveled at the capabilities these newly combined technologies could offer. He moved closer to the vehicle in the far cradle—the one being completed even now by the robot workers.

“What’s the crew component?”

“Twelve. Fifteen in a pinch.”

“And all the specs I’ve seen apply? The fueling system?”

“Virtually inexhaustible. Might need to be rebuilt every five years, but I doubt it.”

“Depth limitations?”

Hayden snorted. “Go on, now. Aren’t any…maybe at ten thousand feet.”

The closer he moved to the submersible, the more he realized how massive the vehicle really was. The skin of the vehicle seemed to be deep blue and black at the same time and glittered insubstantially when he didn’t look directly at it. It seemed, somehow, to be both reflective and translucent at the same time. He reached out to touch it, completely in awe. The massive frame resembled a cross between an insect and a submarine, with heavy, unusual treads. It was an amphibian vessel that collapsed into a smooth submarine when the treads retracted into its main body. The reflective outer skin was unlike a submarine. It resembled a digital display that was both semi-transparent and reflective. These outer surface modules were the “intelligent skin” that mimicked the environment, making the vessel look invisible.

“Careful,” Hayden said. “It’s charged.”

Simon pulled his hand back and looked at his colleague. Hayden had somehow found a half-empty bottle of scotch and was pouring a liberal portion into a chipped white mug. “You’re kidding,” he said. “You worked out the invisibility modules? I thought you were having problems.”

Hayden took a healthy sip and smacked his lips. “Simon, you don’t realize how much you’ve contributed to this project. While you were still playing with your theories, we were adapting them into the prototypes.”

“Are you saying this thing actually works and can become partially invisible?”

“Almost entirely, actually. To radar and sonar it looks like a golf ball.”

He simply couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean to tell me,” he said, “that all these years, in all those seminars and papers and reports…you were hiding this?”

“Well…yes. But it wasn’t a waste of time, Simon. Not at all. The discoveries you made were immediately integrated into the work. Your exotic materials advance? They are real, Simon. Right here, in this vehicle, and the others like it. I chose to keep you away from this part of it for your own safety.”

“Safety?” Simon echoed, feeling the anger rise in him. “You lied to me, slowed me down, and crippled my research for my own safety? What the hell did you think was going to happen if you’d brought me in, Hayden? If you’d told me the truth?”

The scientist’s eyes bored into his own. “The same thing that happened to your father, Simon. Or worse.”

That stopped him. For one moment, he had forgotten everything that had happened in the last few days and weeks, and for the first time he understood the hell that Hayden must have been going through, all alone.

He put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and squeezed. “All right, Hayden,” he said. “I understand but…”

All the scientist could do was nod. He didn’t trust himself to do more.

Simon walked deeper into the facility and tried to look everywhere at once. “Where’s Teah?” he asked. “I thought she was by your side at all times.”

“I sent her on an errand,” Hayden said. “Thought you might want to see this for the first time all by yourself.”

Simon nodded slowly as he looked around. “Yeah,” he said. “I appreciate that.” He turned back to Hayden and said, “It’s incredible. Truly. But what good is it to us—what are you trying to tell me? Neither ship is finished, and you said they’ve cut off supplies.”

“I also said they were idiots. No one seemed to notice that there may not have been enough parts to make two more Spectors here, but there are more than enough to complete one more.”

Simon frowned at him. “One more?”

“Yes. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the empty bay. Spector I is complete. It’s in the hold of a cargo ship, the S.S. Munro under the command of a captain named Doug Donovan, en route to the Southern Ocean for its test voyage right now.”

“The Southern Ocean? Off Antarctica? Why so far?”

Hayden smirked. “That power source I developed? Very experimental and quite powerful. It may work perfectly; it may not work at all. Or—worst case—it will work far better than we intended, and melt the Spector I and everything else within a ten-mile radius. So, the Southern Sea seemed like a logical location for a test run. Far from civilization, far from prying eyes…and inside the Antarctic ice.”

Simon blinked at that. It was just beginning to sink in. “My god,” he said. “It’s done.”

“Done and gone, yes,” Hayden told him, nodding. “But we can build our own.”

Simon looked around, still stunned. “Here? Now?”

Hayden gestured at the robots sliding between the two cradles. “It’s already happening. The peering eyes think this entire facility has been decommissioned. They ought to; I spent three days isolating it, making it look dead, and then instructed all the reactivated ‘bots inside to begin work on cannibalizing Spector II to complete Spector III. They will finish the job in less than twenty-four hours.”

“And then what? How do you plan to get this thing out of here without some massive airlifter that everyone can see?”

Hayden grinned. “Simon, we’re not just underground. You wouldn’t know it without looking very carefully, but we’re underwater as well. More than a hundred feet under the bottom of the Thames. And these,” he pointed to a series of huge hatches, each one taller and wider than a large vehicle, and tightly closed, “can let in the water at any time, while that—” he pointed to the curved dome of the ceiling. “—can open like the roof of an observatory.”

Simon didn’t know what to say. He looked at the roof, at the water valves, at the Spectors themselves hanging mutely in the air like massive steel thunderclouds. “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “you can finish this ship in less than a day, then just open up the room and float it into the Thames, with no one the wiser?”

Hayden beamed like a schoolboy. “That is exactly what I’m saying. With the help of my friendly and obedient AIs and the technology you and I and others like us built unawares…that is exactly what we can do.” He was looking up at the massive submersible as it slowly came together. “Hey!” he called, his Scottish brogue growing thicker the more he drank. “What’s the estimated time of completion?”

A harsh mechanical voice spoke from the empty air: “Sixteen hours, thirteen minutes.”

“That’s it then,” he said, turning back to Simon with a mischievous grin. “And when it’s done, we’re goin’ t’ steal this bastard and float it roit outta here.”

Simon couldn’t stop looking at Spector III.

This changes everything, he thought.





OXFORD, ENGLAND

Green Meadows

A car horn blared at the front gate, and Ryan nearly jumped out of his skin.

“What the devil?” he said. He pushed himself away from the most succulent pork roast he had enjoyed in a month. “Already?” he said to his soon-to-be wife, Sabrina, and the cook, who hovered worriedly at the dining room door. “I thought they said eight o’clock.”

“Well,” Sabrina said with fragile good cheer, “your friends always have been rather…exuberant.”

He smiled in spite of himself and put his linen napkin to the side. “Exuberant,” he repeated. “Spot on.”

The car horn honked a second time. “Why doesn’t he use the bloody intercom? My god, you’d think he was raised in a tube.” He stalked to the mullioned window and looked out over the spacious front lawn of the estate. A massive black car, Andrew’s Range Rover, was hunched just outside the wrought iron gate, lights glaring, and engine roaring.

The window swept down, and Andrew thrust his wildly tangled blonde head out. “Hoy!” he shouted, ignoring the electronic device almost at his cheek. “It’s me!”

“Idiot,” Ryan said, grinning. He lifted his head and called into the open air, “Fiona, would you please open the front gate for our guests?”

“Yes, Mr. Ryan,” replied the housekeeper AI. There was a distant grumbling as the iron wings spread wide; a moment later the Range Rover was racing toward the oval driveway. It lurched to a stop right in front of the entrance.

Like many of his closest friends, Ryan was very good—brilliant, in fact—with cybernetics. In his case, he was a near-genius when it came to a nasty little sub-branch of the discipline known as Remote Access Intervention, an almost entirely theoretical field that postulated methods of exerting control over artificial intelligences at a distance—robot mind control, to put it bluntly. Ryan also happened to be the scion of one of the country’s oldest and richest families, and with the recent death of his mother, he now found himself the beneficiary and prisoner to one of England’s larger fortunes.

What he loved most about his friends from university is how they really, truly, didn’t give a shit about his elevated class or his mountain of money. Sometimes, though, they could be a bit much.

Sabrina—neat, quiet, steely Sabrina—hovered in the doorway. “All of them?” she said quite seriously. “At once?”

He smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid so.”

The front door burst open, and Andrew flew in, a skittering mass of beer-fueled energy. Simon came in after him, far more calmly. He had his fists thrust into the pockets of his raincoat, and there was a weight, a grimness, about him that Ryan had never seen before. Samantha was close behind Simon, as beautiful and watchful as ever. Hayden, looking even sour, brought up the rear.

Sabrina looked from face to face and resisted the temptation to shake her head in dismay. Above all things, Sabrina was cordial. Well-bred. Polite to a fault. But she had no education in science, physics or otherwise, and even less interest in them. She recognized that her husband-to-be needed friends of his own, especially those who are accomplished in their own fields, but still…still.

She hadn’t wanted to host this little get-together. She had done her best to quash it before it began, but Ryan had been surprisingly and uncharacteristically insistent. “Simon wants to see me,” he said. “He wants to bring Hayden and Andrew and Sammy along. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

Sabrina resented it. She was not the type who enjoyed surprises. She liked—she required—that every detail of a social event be planned well in advance and executed flawlessly. Just throwing a few crackers onto a plate with some store-bought cheese slices and cracking open a keg was not acceptable. And yet, here they were, dripping dirty rainwater in her alcove and just waiting for her to leave.

The things we do for love, she thought bitterly.

Samantha was the first to speak. “Sabrina,” she said, stepping forward and smiling warmly, “I apologize for us barging in like this. I do hope we’re not causing too much of a problem.”

Sabrina smiled thinly. “Not at all,” she lied.

“Are there snacks?” Andrew asked, peering into the sitting room to one side.

Simon stepped forward and kissed Sabrina briefly on each cheek. “Thanks for the hospitality.”

“It’s nothing. May I ask why you didn’t use the intercom at the gate? If it’s broken…”

“No,” Hayden said. “It’s fine, I’m sure. We just…we didn’t use it, that’s all.”

The truth is, Simon said to himself, you don’t have a super-secret spy-phone that’s safe from eavesdropping, and we don’t want anyone to even know we’re here, so…god, this is getting complicated.

Sabrina slipped away to prepare the sitting room, and the rest of the group followed down the corridor, gradually taking off their topcoats and scarves as they went. It was an imposing place—all polished wood, mullioned windows and ancient, heavy furniture. Simon half-expected a wizened retainer in a tux to step out from behind the array.

The library was almost a parody of the book-lined studies seen in a thousand BBC dramas, stacked floor to ceiling with shelves completely filled with dusty tomes no one had opened in a generation, overcrowded with comfy chairs and discreet reading lamps. As he peeled off his coat, he said, “Ryan, we’re in a bit of a situation here. We need to talk.” He leaned close to his friend and spoke so no one else could hear, “And we don’t want to alarm Sabrina.”

Simon had to give Ryan credit: he didn’t gape at the mere mention of a crisis. He cast a guarded, concerned look at his impeccable bride-to-be, who—to her credit—noticed the expression and read it perfectly.

“Well, all,” she said with a little smile, “I know this is important, and I’m quite sure I won’t understand a word of it. So, I think I will leave you to it for the evening.” She paused briefly, as if searching for words. “Whatever it is…I wish you the best of luck.”

With that, she stepped backwards through the double doors and slid them shut, leaving the rest of them alone.

The silence in the room was deep and deafening. Simon was the first to break it. “Do you have an AI active in here?”

Ryan, who was staring distractedly at the door where his fiancée had disappeared, shook himself awake. “Of course.” Simon looked over to Andrew who was already playing with his gadgets to scramble and confuse the AI in the room. Simon pulled the memory card with Oliver’s message imprinted on it from his breast pocket and laid it on the table.

Andrew cocked an eye at him. “We all good in the big ears department?” he asked obscurely.

Simon tapped the same breast pocket, where he held Andrew’s device. “Never leave home without it,” he said, smiling grimly. A roiling black cube appeared above the end table as the data from the card loaded. “I could try and explain all this to you,” he said. “And I will. But I need to show this to you first. Just…watch.” He tapped the card, muttered, “Play,” and his father’s eerily smiling face appeared.

No one spoke while the message played through, and no one spoke for a long time after.

Samantha, who had heard the story already, was still having a hard time taking it all in. “That…that doesn’t seem like him at all.”

“What was with that laugh?” Andrew said, strangely subdued for the moment. “I never heard Oliver Fitzpatrick laugh like that.”

Ryan had worked with father and son for years. He knew both of them exceedingly well. Now he just shook his head. “He was lying,” he said bitterly. “Clearly. Obviously. Anyone who had ever worked with the man would know that.”

“Absolutely,” Hayden said. He was leaning against the bookcase, arms folded, a look of outrage and deep concern on his lined face.

Simon felt the tension flow from his body. “Then it’s not just me,” he said.

“Not at all,” Sammy said, utterly in shock from what she had witnessed.

Ryan turned and faced his old friend with an unaccustomed intensity. “Simon, listen to me. We have to get to the bottom of this. Whatever you need—connections, media, bribes, I don’t care—it’s yours. All of it. We have to locate Oliver and bring him home.”

Simon looked at the others. “The rest of you?”

“I’m there,” Andrew said, his voice uncharacteristically rough. “Whatever you need.”

Hayden snorted. “What do you think?” he said.

Sam gave him the ghost of a smile. “You already know my answer, Simon.”

Simon took a breath. The relief that flowed through him was a palpable, physical sensation. He smiled completely, sincerely, for the first time in days. “That is exactly what I wanted to hear,” he said.

Ryan frowned, thinking furiously. “Have you contacted the authorities?”

“No. What would I tell them? ‘Good lord, Inspector, I received a message from my father and he’s alive and well and seems quite happy! Help me!’”

Andrew snorted. “Besides, the ‘authorities’ have been lying to you all along, haven’t they? They’re the ones who told you he was dead. ‘Oh, ever so sorry, do forgive us, b’bye now.’”

Simon nodded. “Exactly.” He reached into the other pocket of his jacket. “And there’s more.”

“More?” Andrew crowed.

“Good,” Ryan said.

Simon pulled out the hand-bound book and put it on the end table where his father’s head had appeared moments before. “I was given this at the same time I was given the message from my father. It’s a diary of chess games.”

“Oh, come now,” Ryan scoffed. “The man never kept notes of any kind; the last thing in the world he’d do is keep a chess diary.”

“Exactly what I said,” Hayden told them. He crossed the room and held out his hand. “Let me take a look at that again.”

Simon gave it to him. “I’ve already played through all these games; I think there are some general…ideas? He was trying to convey to me with them, but I think there’s more. I think there is specific, important information hidden in here somehow, and I want your help to find it.”

Ryan also started leafing through the journal, concentrating hard. “Who gave this to you?” he said.

“I did,” said a new voice from across the room.

All of them in a single movement whirled around to look at the double doors that Sabrina had closed almost an hour earlier.

Jonathan Weiss, still in his tailored raincoat, was standing just in front of the closed doors, his hands in front of him, gently holding his sopping hat. “If you’re trying to be secretive, the first thing you need to do is to lock the doors.”

Simon was the first to move. He rose and walked over to Jonathan, overwhelmingly glad to see him. Samantha, who had never much cared for Jonathan, held back, her arms crossed, her expression skeptical.

Ryan had met Jonathan only a few times in the past, at holiday parties and large gatherings, and even those had been many months ago—now he sat quietly, wondering how he had managed to get in without a peep. Andrew, meanwhile, had no idea who he was at all. Once introductions had been exchanged, and assurances that Jonathan knew everything about Oliver’s disappearance—and probably more—had been made, he was welcomed as part of the group and given a place to sit.

“So what do we do next?” Andrew asked.

Hayden had lost interest in the social niceties almost immediately. He was concentrating on the diary instead. Now he looked up at Simon, his eyes glittering sharply. “You say you’ve played through these games?” he said.

Simon nodded, as he and Jonathan walked closer to the others. “First night I got it, yes.” He briefly described what he’d learned from playing through his father’s chess journal. He’d found that each of the matches had a message—a “moral,” so to speak—but he had to admit that none of it amounted to much. He showed the scientist a hand-written list where he’d recorded what he learned.

Hayden scowled at it. “Juvenile,” he said.

Simon frowned back. “What?”

Hayden stared briefly, intensely at each page of the diary, then flipped it over almost impatiently and moved to the next. As the others chatted about Jonathan’s arrival and Oliver’s disappearance, Simon realized that Hayden was playing each of the games in his head, one after another, at astonishing speed.

“A good chess game is like a Chinese puzzle box or a set of Russian dolls,” Hayden said as he read. “Layer on layer, a puzzle in a puzzle.” He gestured in frustration at the diary. “But these games are absurd, Simon. Oliver was a much better player than this. A brilliant player, actually, much as I hate to admit it. So why did he record this odd set of matches? And why, in every single one, did he lose on purpose?”

Simon glared at him, baffled as well. “What?”

“Look. In every single one, he moved the king into a specific, compromised position. He moved the king into an intricate but contrived checkmate.” He shook his head emphatically; the silver wings of hair swayed back and forth. “No, he was far too sophisticated a player to do that. Something else is going on.”

He looked around the room as if searching for something. “Ryan,” he said. “Do you have paper and a pen somewhere?”

Ryan turned to him, mildly surprised. No one actually used paper anymore. “Ah…I can call the notepad up on the console, if you like.”

Hayden shook his head, less emphatically this time. “No. Nothing electronic. Oliver only trusted ink on paper; I’m going to follow his lead.”

It was a more difficult task than anyone expected. Ryan searched the desk drawers and even asked the AI. They finally located an antique fountain pen—quite a lovely bit of craftsmanship—but sheets of blank paper were nowhere to be found.

Finally Hayden lost patience. He stood up, stalked to the nearest floor-to-ceiling bookcase, and pulled a book off the shelf almost at random. Simon noticed it was the largest book—in size, if not thickness—within easy reach.

“The Peregrinations of Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Facsimile Edition,” he read. He cocked an eye at Ryan. “You mind if I use this?”

Ryan blinked in surprise, then shrugged. “I suppose not,” he said. “I doubt anyone’s opened it since the turn of the century.”

Hayden opened it, flipped quickly to the back, and located three pages with printing on only one side. Without another word, he curled his hands around the edge and jerked. The pages separated from the binding with a loud rip.

Hayden replaced the book on the shelf and plopped down exactly where he had been sitting before. Quickly, almost carelessly, he drew a chessboard on one of the sheets—an eight-by-eight grid. Then, half from memory, half from referring to the diary—he drew an “X” and a number in the square where the king had been left at the end of the game: X1 for the first game, X2 for the second, until he ran out of matches to record.

As he worked he said, “Andrew? Draw another grid. You too, Sam. Rip that page in half. Simon, Jonathan: grids.”

They all followed directions; in a matter of minutes, just as Hayden was finishing his list, they were all staring at individual sixty-four-square diagrams.

He looked up at them, concentrating intensely. “All right then. Sammy? Put the letters A to Z in your boxes, one letter per box, beginning in the upper left. Left to right, top to bottom. It’ll repeat about two and a half times.”

“Got it,” she said and started writing.

“Andrew? Same thing, but start in the lower left. Bottom to top, left to right. Simon? Start in the upper right. Right to left, top to bottom. And Jon—”

“Bottom to top, right to left.”

“Right. Tell me when you’re done.”

It only took a moment. When the last of them had finished, Hayden said, “All of you know algebraic chess notation, I assume?”

All heads nodded. Most of them had learned it when they were children. Hayden smiled. “All right then. I’m going to start calling out squares. Write the corresponding letter at the bottom of the page, in the order I give it. My guess is that one of you is going to start seeing actual words, and the others will see gibberish. Ready?”

They all said they were.

“Good. Here we go. H8…G5…F4…B3—”

“Got it,” Samantha said. “Oh my god…”

Hayden looked away from his paper, and found all four of them were holding up their sheets. Three of them were showing him an indecipherable jumble of letters under their grids…but Samantha’s read:

HELP

“I’ll be damned,” he said in a hushed voice. “It worked.”

He carefully read the rest of his list. Sam completed the message. No one else spoke until he was done. She wordlessly handed over the sheet, her eyes huge and filled with tears.

Hayden read the message, then sighed deeply. He gave it to Simon, then stood up and turned away, so he wouldn’t have to watch the younger man read it.

HELP ME

HELD CAPTIVE IN ANTARCTICA

TALK TO LEON. HE WILL KNOW

Simon put his hand to his forehead, as if his mind was moving in too many directions at once.

“This is crazy,” Hayden said into the silence. “He must have played each of these games in reverse, starting with where he had to have the king end up.” Simon ran both hands through his hair and pressed his skull between them. Why Dad? he asked himself. Why did he have to go to such incredible lengths to send me a message? And even now: no one but me would know what he meant by “Talk to Leon.” He’s still being careful, even in his code-within-a-code message. He looked at Andrew and Ryan; they were both speechless as he handed the message to them, so they could read it for themselves.

“Ryan?” He said as they finished. “I need a glass of scotch.”

Samantha’s eyes were filled with tears. “Simon,” she said, almost whispering. “I am so sorry.” She closed her eyes.

Simon stood up and gave her a warm embrace. “It’s okay. I’m going to find him.” He looked up at all the friends and allies around the room. “We are going to find him.” He squeezed her between his arms and closed his own eyes.

Ryan handed him a glass with three fingers of decent scotch in it. As he raised it to his lips, the sliding doors rolled open and Sabrina revealed herself.

“Ryan?” she said. “Is everything all right?”

The group exchanged guilty looks. “Fine, darling,” Ryan said, trying to keep it light. “In fact…I think we’re about to break it up for tonight.”

The others looked at each other and nodded, stunned and mute. Sabrina smiled at all of them. “Is there anything I can get for you before you go?” she said.

Samantha cleared her throat. “Yes, please,” she said politely. “I could do with a glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Sabrina offered her a very thin smile. “Not at all,” she said, and retreated to the kitchen.

Andrew took advantage of the moment. He opened his briefcase and passed out the secure phones he had created, one to each of them. “Talk only to each other with these,” he said. “And don’t even mention the plan in any other way—not now. Clear?”

They all agreed.

“Things are happening very fast,” Simon said. “I’ll talk to you all tomorrow, but please, if I call and say, ‘it’s time,’ be ready!”

There was a strange, sweet electricity in the air between them: anticipation, dread, boldness, fear. Sabrina returned with a glass filled with water. Samantha took it with murmured thanks and drank a fraction.

“Ah,” she said. “Much better.”

“We’re off then,” Simon announced, slightly uncomfortable under the withering gaze of Ryan’s fiancée.

Samantha offered her hand to Sabrina. “You’ve been a gracious host, thank you.”

The grip was very polite and very brief. “Of course,” Sabrina said.

Those women just don’t like each other, Simon observed as he gathered everything and put on his coat.

Simon watched them file down the hall and make brief goodbyes to their hosts. As they left, he thought briefly of the list he had made. It was complete now, one way or another. He had talked with everyone he wanted to. Though how he would proceed without Max on board, he still wasn’t sure.

I’ll work it out somehow, he told himself. I’ll have no choice.