As the gunman crumpled into a heap, the face of her savior was revealed. Though still cloaked in shadow, Jade immediately recognized the person standing there. Her surprise at the appearance of the gunman was nothing to what she now experienced.
“Professor?”
His grim expression transformed into a smile as he briskly advanced, arms thrown wide invitingly. Jade ran forward, not interested in escape as much as she was in being in his arms. The same arms that had just broken a man’s neck enfolded her in a tight embrace which she returned with matching vigor. Then his lips found hers.
The kiss was so unexpected that, for a moment, she didn’t know how to respond. Not until this moment did she realize how long she had been waiting for him to do this, how much she wanted it.
Kellogg’s voice intruded on the moment. “There are more of them behind us. We have to go.”
Professor pulled away, taking Jade’s hand and pulling her, gently but urgently, along behind him. They emerged onto the warm but still breezy streets and Professor headed toward an SUV parked across the street. There were no other cars, but Jade remained wary. There had been at least half-a-dozen attackers at the museum in Syracuse which meant several were unaccounted for.
A tumult arose from behind them as the gunmen from the Oracle Room spilled out of the entrance to the Hypogeum. Their shouts were not a warning to the escaping prey but rather an internal communication between the pursuers. A moment later, the shots started.
Jade ducked involuntarily as the bullets began hammering into the fenders of the vehicle to which they ran. Professor however whirled around, drawing a semi-automatic pistol from his waistband, and squeezed off several shots. His return fire shattered the attack and sent the men — all but one of them who now lay sprawled out on the sidewalk, clutching a bloody chest wound — scrambling back into the museum.
Without putting the gun away, Professor wrenched the SUV’s door open. “Inside. Hurry.”
Jade didn’t need to be told twice. She and Kellogg piled into the vehicle — she took the passenger seat, Kellogg got in back — while Professor slid behind the steering wheel. A few seconds later, they were racing away down the quiet backstreets of Paola.
Jade’s heart rate and breathing gradually returned to normal, but her mind refused to slow down. Part of her was still out in the cosmos, racing above the earth like a guided missile, homing in on the vault, even though she now felt she knew less about it than she had half an hour before. Part of her was still reliving this latest attack, which had come closer than any of the others to ending her search forever.
Part of her could not stop thinking about the kiss. About his lips pressing against hers, firm, assertive but not overly intrusive. It was almost everything she could have hoped for.
Which made it so much harder for her to admit what she knew to be true.
The man that had just saved her… just kissed her… was not Professor.
He looked like Professor, sounded like him…even smelled like him. But something about him was wrong. The kiss and the emotion behind were so out of character that there could be no doubt.
Professor had been replaced by a Changeling.
NINETEEN
As the hours stretched into days, it became increasingly harder for Professor not to second guess his decision to allow himself to be recaptured. His reasons were still valid. His escape had been a carefully orchestrated fiction, a test to see what he would do if given the chance. He was certain of that, just as he was certain that First Officer Carrera, or the woman claiming to be her, was working with his captors.
A true escape under those circumstances was impossible for the simple reason that he had no idea who or what he was escaping from. He did not know who was really behind his abduction, or the hijacking of the airliner. He did not even know for certain where he was. Sitting in the cockpit of the derelict aircraft, he had decided that learning the answers to those questions took higher priority than trying to get away.
The “escape” had been a fiction in more ways than one.
They had come for him in force, a force of eight men… scratch that, eight persons. Their genders had been concealed, along with their faces and any easily identifiable features, behind shapeless gray coveralls and mesh head coverings. They carried Taser X26C stun guns, which was interesting but not particularly illuminating. Their movement through the plane had been orderly but not exactly tactical. His sense was that they were not trained operators, not even soldiers, or if they had received formal training, it was from a playbook of their own devising. Without uttering a single word, they closed on him, tased him senseless, and then tranquilized him with another injection.
When he came to again, he was back in the squalid little cabin, no closer to answers than he had been before making his run into the woods.
He remained there for what felt like several hours, silently daring his captors to send Carrera or someone else in to check on him, but no one came knocking. Finally, he cleared his throat and addressed the ceiling. “I’m sure you guys are watching… listening at least, so why don’t we cut to the chase. If you want something from me, just ask.”
No reply.
He counted his heartbeats, trying to gauge the passage of time. After what felt like about half an hour, he tried again. “If you don’t tell me what you want, I can’t very well give it to you.”
Silence.
It was an answer though.
His thoughts kept drifting back to that old television series. He remembered the intro word for word, could still hear the defiant voice of the captive secret agent.
What do you want?
And the reply, a different voice each week, but always the same words.
Information.
Information about what? Ongoing espionage missions? The names of highly placed NOC agents? Moles in the politburo?
It didn’t matter. Information was just a MacGuffin, a symbol of the man’s defiance in the face of Byzantine plots to break his spirit.
You won’t get it, the secret agent had replied, week after week, and always the reply was the same.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Information.
He swung his legs onto the floor, stood up and went outside. The sun was overhead, which meant he’d been under for a full day. A few minutes later, he spotted Carrera walking toward him. There was something different about her. Her bearing had changed, her posture and gait were more assertive. She was the same person, but no longer playing the same role.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I thought you were going to wait until after sundown,” she remarked, undisguisedly sardonic.
He shrugged. “That’s what I told you. It was never my plan.”
She got within a few yards of him, stopped and put her hands on her hips. “When did you know?”
“Know what?”
She gazed back at him as if trying to judge his sincerity. “I know you’re not stupid,” she said after a long pause.
“Flattery now?”
“Look, just answer the question. When did you know?”
Interesting, he thought. She repeated the question, but didn’t specify. Didn’t give anything away. She’s fishing. Two can play that game. “I was a Boy Scout. One look at the sun told me that we weren’t in the Northern Hemisphere. So I knew you were lying. Either about where we were, or about being a pilot.”
She nodded slowly. “I didn’t know if I could trust you. I thought it might be some kind of test.”
“A test?”