“Garin, yesterday morning, when I woke up in the Concord Hotel, that man was dead in my living room. I had a big bruise on my ribs and a knot on my head, and I don’t remember anything prior to that—who I am, what happened to me, or how he died.”
Garin shook his head, clearly skeptical. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. I found a note in my pocket. It led me to your phone number.”
Garin squinted and glanced away from Desmond, as if contemplating whether he believed him.
“What do you want from me?”
“Answers. I’m trying to figure out what happened to me.”
Garin looked incredulous. “You want answers from me?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Because you owe me some answers.” Garin glanced around. “Forget it. I’m done.”
He began to stand, but Desmond leaned forward and grabbed his forearm. “You said someone was following you. What if it’s the same person who killed Gunter Thorne?”
That got Garin’s attention.
“You really want to walk away without hearing what I have to say?”
Garin exhaled and settled back into the chair.
“Okay. Good. Let’s start over. How do we know each other? What do you do?”
“I’m an investigative journalist writing for Der Spiegel. You contacted me a few weeks ago.”
“Why?”
“To discuss a story I’d written. It was about multi-national corporations that were possibly colluding with each other on everything from bid-fixing to currency manipulation and unauthorized clinical trials. You said I’d stumbled upon something much bigger, that I’d only seen the tip of the iceberg. You wanted to meet. You promised me the biggest story of my career, ‘possibly the biggest story of all time.’”
“A story about what?”
“The Looking Glass.”
The three words struck fear into Desmond. But try as he might, he couldn’t remember why.
“What is the Looking Glass?” he asked.
“According to you, it’s a project that has been going on for over two thousand years. A scientific endeavor on a scale the world has never seen before. You said the greatest scientific minds in history, across generations, had been working on the Looking Glass, and that it was near completion. Your words to me were that it would make the Manhattan Project and the creation of the nuclear bomb look like a middle school science fair exhibit.”
“The Looking Glass is a weapon?”
“I don’t know; you never told me. We were supposed to meet four days ago. You were going to tell me everything then, and I was going to write up the story and publish it online. You said it was the only way to stop what was going to happen. You said they had penetrated all levels of governments around the world, and that exposing them was the only way to stop them.”
“Stop whom?”
“Again, I don’t know.”
“And you have no idea what the Looking Glass is, or does?”
“I wish I did. You wouldn’t tell me over the phone, only that very soon the scientists building it would use it to take control of the human race, and that it would permanently alter humanity’s future.”
Desmond couldn’t hide his disappointment. He had woken up this morning expecting to get answers. And so, it seemed, had Garin Meyer. The man had as many questions as Desmond did.
“Can you tell me anything else? Anything I said, even if you think it might be irrelevant.”
“Just one other thing. You said there were three components of the Looking Glass: Rook, Rendition, and Rapture.”
Rapture Therapeutics, Desmond thought. The dead man in his hotel room had been a security worker there. As for Rook and Rendition… he was sure he had seen those words somewhere too, but he couldn’t place them.
Garin reached into his pocket and drew out a flip phone.
“I said no phones.”
“You’re also wanted for murder. This is a disposable I bought just in case there was trouble. Only my fiancée has the number.”
Garin opened the phone, held it to his ear, and listened a moment, his body growing tense. He spoke in German, quickly, whispering, and Desmond had to focus in order to translate the words in his mind. “Don’t worry, it’s okay. Everything will be okay. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
Something was wrong. Desmond glanced around, taking in every face, every car, every motorcycle, his focus sharpened, like an animal on the open prairie that had sensed a predator entering its territory.
Garin tapped a few keys on the phone.
“Hand me the phone, Garin.”
The German reporter swallowed but kept his head down, typing more quickly.
Desmond reached across the table and grabbed the phone out of Garin’s hands, drawing the attention of several people at tables nearby. The screen was open to the text messages window, where Garin had written a single line:
Cafe Einstein
“I’m sorry,” Garin said. “They have my fiancée. They said they’d kill her if I didn’t tell them where we were and keep you here.”
Over Garin’s shoulder, just down the street, Desmond saw a white cargo van pull away from the curb, its tires screeching, with two motorcycles close behind it. All three vehicles were barreling toward the cafe.
“I’m sorry too, Garin.”
Below the table, Desmond pulled the ring igniters on three tactical smoke grenades. Smoke billowed from under the table, pouring into the street. He took the remaining two canisters from his backpack, stood, pulled the ring igniters, and tossed them in opposite directions into the street. The smoke pulled a curtain across the thoroughfare. People shouted and shoved, scrambling to get off the street.
Desmond tossed Garin’s phone onto the table and ran, covering his mouth with his arm, the handgun held straight down at his side in case they caught up to him. He moved quickly, turning off Unter Den Linden, putting distance between himself and the scene.
Behind him, he heard tires lock and slide against pavement. Cars collided. The roar of the motorcycles ceased.