He looked at her. It was so obvious. He’d been so completely stupid. Counterterrorism? No. If that was all, they could have left it to ERD, left it to the wider Homeland Security apparatus that ERD was part of. Why was CIA involved? It had to be something higher stakes.
Something like Sam was describing.
Nakamura stared into Sam’s eyes. An image of his grandfather flashed before his eyes, the boy in his mother’s arms, in black and white, behind that barbed with fence, while his father went out and fought for the country that imprisoned him.
Loyalty.
Where did his loyalties lie? Where?
68
ESCAPE
Friday November 2nd
Kade woke before dawn. Friday. He felt rested and at peace with his decision. But other subjects loomed in his mind. Where was Rangan? Was Feng still alive? Was there any way to stop the bombing just forty hours in the future?
Shiva summoned him for breakfast on the roof.
“Have you reconsidered?” Shiva asked.
Kade looked at Shiva. He understood this man now. He could have become this man.
“I can’t give you the back door.”
Shiva grunted in reply.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” Kade said. He described the assassination plans. “You can stop it. Send an anonymous warning.”
Shiva frowned, shook his head.
“These men are monsters, Kade. They’re enemies of the future.”
Kade nodded. “I agree. They should be brought to justice. But not like this.”
“There’s blood on their hands,” Shiva said. “They deserve to die.”
“Not like this,” Kade repeated.
Shiva waved that away. “They’re the enemy, Kade. They’ve tried to kill you. They’ve imprisoned your friends. They’ve persecuted scientists doing valuable research. They hunt down children who have Nexus in their brains. They have plans for genocide.”
“There’ll be hundreds of other deaths,” Kade said. “Innocents.”
Shiva scoffed. “Innocents? No one who gives money to these monsters is innocent. No one who helps get them elected is innocent.”
Kade exhaled, tried to keep his cool. He had to reach Shiva. “This isn’t going to benefit you,” Kade said. He put his hands together, his palms meeting as if in prayer, leaned towards Shiva, his voice straining. “Shiva, this is going to turn Chandler and Shepherd into martyrs. Events like this are the reason the ERD exists, the reason that Copenhagen exists. If you let this happen, we’ll end up with a hundred more politicians like Chandler, with a new Chandler Act that’s ten times worse than the current one, with more crackdowns on Nexus and every transhuman technology.” He stared into Shiva’s eyes. “This isn’t going to advance your goals.”
Shiva stared back at him.
“Fine,” the older man said. “You want mercy? You want me to spare the lives of these murderers? These enemies of the future? I’ll do it. For you, Kade. Just give me the back door, and I’ll save these lives for you.”
Kade looked down at his hands. “You know I won’t do that.”
Shiva shook his head, his lips pursed. “Pathetic.”
Kade paced, searching for a way out of here. Day turned to afternoon, afternoon to evening. The serving girl brought dinner to his room. Vegetarian this time. They’d learned his new preferences. He forced himself to eat, to keep up his strength, to be ready for any opportunity.
She came back an hour later, cleaned away the food, tidied up the room as she did daily. The guard waited by the door. When she came back from inside the kitchen, her eyes bored into his. She silently mouthed something at him, something he didn’t catch, then gestured with one hand, out of view of the guard. Gestured back at the kitchen.
What?
Then she left. “Goodnight!” she called out in her heavily accented English.
“Good night, sir,” the guard echoed her.
Kade sat at the writing desk. What had that been about?
He went Inside, accessed his recent memory buffer, replayed that scene, then again, and again, and one more time at lower speed.
“Tonight.” He wasn’t sure, but he thought that’s what she’d been mouthing at him. Then she’d gestured into the kitchen.
Kade rose. He stepped into the kitchen, fetched himself a glass of water, took a long look around, stepped to the window looking down into the courtyard.
It was twilight out there, but still light enough that he could see. The children were gone by now, bundled off to bed. He’d learned their patterns. A pair of the research staff were seated on a bench, talking. A security man was walking a circuit.
And beneath his hands, on the window sill, where the metal frame was bolted in… The lock was there, still holding the bolt in place. It rested on the frame. But when he surreptitiously put his hand on it, and tugged ever so slightly, his gaze still fixed on the courtyard, he met no resistance.
Kade forced himself to wait, to think. The lock was open. He could open the window, break the Faraday mesh. He could reach his mind out of this cage, find a network hub. Or better. Find a mind running Nexus. The guards didn’t wear jammers when they walked the grounds. He could take one, coerce him, coerce all of them, even Shiva, then get the hell out of here.
But why? Why had that girl unlocked the window? Who had sent her? Sam? Ananda? Shu? Feng?
Or was this a trick? A trap of some sort?
But why? They had him already.
Kade forced himself to wait two hours, until the sky was as dark as it would be. He still had more questions than answers. But he couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this.
He rose, slipped on the sandals they’d given him, padded to the kitchen, looked out into the courtyard. It was dark out there. Only a few dim lights illuminated the space.
His eyes slowly adjusted. All was quiet. He could see no sign of movement.
He waited ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. No one moved.
There might be someone in his range that he couldn’t see. Shiva might still be on the roof, soaking up the night view. He’d only know if he opened the metal frame, pushed the mesh shielding aside.
He had to do it, then. He damped his Nexus transmission, went into a listen-only mode. And then, slowly, he pulled the padlock open, slid it out of the lock, as subtly as he could.
Then he took one more deep breath, and pulled on the frame, tugging it in towards him on its hinges. It was jammed from disuse. He tugged slowly and consistently, until it came loose with a scrape, swinging open just a crack.
His breath caught in his throat. The Faraday cage was broken.
He positioned himself by the crack he’d opened, felt out with his mind for anything out there.
Nothing. No one in range.
He opened the frame wider, gave himself a wider transmission angle to work with, reached out again.
Nothing.
Kade looked for network connections. He found several, but all locked, encrypted.
He visualized the mansion’s layout. At one end of the courtyard was a gate and a gatehouse, where he’d always seen a guard. He couldn’t see the gate from here. But if he could get close enough, and the guard was still there… Then Kade could take him. Could have the man open the gate, lead him to a car and then a boat, show him how to get off the island.
But first, he must get close enough.
He looked out his window again, opened his mind wide for any trace of another. Nothing. But below his window… A trellis, climbing up to maybe four feet below his window ledge. It was covered in tropical flowering vines. He could climb down that, reach the ground, sneak in the darkness towards the south wing…