He was considering whether to explore the concept further, outside the station, when reality intervened. So engrossed was DeBolt in this new idea, he nearly missed his train. He scrambled aboard with two minutes to spare, took a seat by the window, and marveled at META: there had to be hundreds of possibilities he hadn’t even considered yet.
DeBolt settled in for an afternoon spent traversing the Rhine Valley and Bavaria. He set aside the what-ifs and committed to more practical research, even if he undertook it in a way that few people on earth could imagine — he closed his eyes and envisioned what he wanted.
He learned nothing more about Dr. Atif Patel, deepening his suspicions that the man had specifically blocked searches. More alarmingly, he learned that Shannon Lund’s reservation on a United Airlines flight from Dulles to Kodiak had been canceled. DeBolt searched from every angle he could think of — airline reservations, TSA records, mobile phone tracking, credit card usage — but found nothing on Lund’s current whereabouts. Had she taken some obscure route home, perhaps on a military transport? Or was she still on the East Coast digging for information? Either way, he decided she was safe. Safe because she was nowhere near him.
He slept intermittently, fitfully, until 5:42 that evening when, under a driving November rain, the train drew smoothly and punctually into Vienna’s Wien Westbahnhof.
Late that same afternoon, another jet landed at Vienna International Airport. The A330 taxied home, was umbilicaled to its jetway, and passengers began to disembark. Among them was a large bald man who, weary after forty-eight hours of travel, was relieved to reach an end point.
Delta did not consider Austria home, but he’d come to like the place. He liked the food, the beer, and most of all the fact that because so many languages were spoken here — and inversely, so many not spoken — people didn’t find it peculiar when he failed to respond to their questions or reply to conversational openers. He simply answered with a shrug, and nobody seemed to mind.
He slipped uneventfully through immigration using a new identity, the pretext of Douglas Wilson having exceeded its shelf life. He’d kept that one longer than he should have, a mistake that had necessitated his second trip to Alaska. Lesson learned. For years the Marine Corps had dispatched him across the world to do its own brand of violence, but those travels had typically been undertaken on military transports, or occasionally commercial flights, under his real name. He’d dabbled in clandestine work, but it was not his forte. Delta was a killer, no more and no less, an asset built for sand dunes and ditches and jungles, for urban assault in third-world hovels. Give him a door to breach, an MP4, maybe a few grenades, and he could sanitize a room with what bordered on artistry.
He was getting better at these new missions, the secrets and duplicity. And he would continue to do so. Delta had only begun to explore what his new abilities allowed. The more he learned, the more lethal he would become. There was already no soldier on earth like him. Not the prima donna squad he’d eliminated in Boston. Certainly not Bravo. A Coastie, he thought derisively. A man whose only training involved saving lives. Still, Bravo had been enabled with META, so he couldn’t be underestimated. He wasn’t a threat, but if he learned how to leverage his powers he could prove very elusive.
Delta initiated communications as soon as he reached the line of taxis outside. His instructions were waiting:
DONAUKANAL
He knew it well enough, a place they had met before. He went to the first cab in line and slid into the backseat. The driver turned and said, “Wohin gehst du?”
Delta took out one of his cards, along with the pen he always carried, and wrote an address on the back. The driver, a thickset Bavarian with a day’s growth of stubble, made an upside-down U with his mouth and nodded to imply that he understood.
As they struck away from the curb, it occurred to Delta that communicating with the cards carried a degree of operational risk. He was leaving a written record of his destination with the driver. Of course, the man knew where they were going anyway, and could relay it after the fact to the police or any adversary. Still, it was yet another complication brought on by his condition. A small problem, but a problem all the same. The card also confirmed his inability to speak, and the fact that he was a United States Marine who’d been injured in combat. All true. He was proud of his service, but in light of his new trajectory in life, he supposed it was unwise to offer information unnecessarily. Any of it might be traceable, perhaps in ways he didn’t even understand. Fingerprints or DNA on the card itself. There were some clever people in this world. Very clever indeed. He was on his way to meet one of them right now.
47
Delta paid the cab at the base of a bridge whose name he didn’t know. He could have found out easily enough, but he’d long ago committed to not squandering his abilities on the trivial. His connectivity was an awesome weapon, and that was how he treated it, like a gun kept clean and oiled to be ready on a moment’s notice.
It was nearly seven o’clock when he found Patel standing near the Badeschiff, or bathing boat, a barge moored along the river that had been ridiculously converted into a swimming pool. The diminutive Patel did not see him approaching, and when he finally sensed Delta’s presence he turned with a start.
“Oh … good. I hope your travels went well.”
Delta did not nod or shrug. Even if he could speak, he would have ignored Patel’s small talk. It was one of the few positives of his condition — the expectation of silence without appearing rude. The two had once tried to sustain a back-and-forth dialogue, Patel speaking and Delta responding with text messages to his phone. Varying delays in transmission had made the process unwieldy, even confusing, and so they’d agreed to keep things simple. Whenever possible, Patel framed questions for direct yes or no answers, and Delta would either nod or shake his head. If a more detailed response was necessary, or if he had a question, he simply wrote it on one of his cards.
“Our second problem in Alaska has been dealt with?”
Delta nodded.
“Well done. We are gaining ground.”
They began to walk the riverside promenade, meandering toward a well-lit strip where bars and restaurants predominated, and where an old warehouse was being upgraded into a chic new block of condos. The others strolling the riverside path fell into one of two broad categories: pairs of men and women moving slowly on their way to dinner, and younger packs, threes and fives, full of energy and anticipation for a night in the clubs. No one gave a second glance to the two incongruous men engrossed in a peculiarly one-sided conversation.
“Only two remain then — Bravo, of course, and this Coast Guard investigator. You went through her emails and phone history?”
Delta nodded.
“Did you find any link between them prior to the call that brought her to Boston?”
A shake of the head.
“What about her apartment? Was there anything to suggest that she and Bravo had a relationship? Pictures, birthday cards, clothes in the closet that were his size?”
Delta again shook his head.
Patel went silent as he considered it. “Why?” he said rhetorically. “I don’t understand why she’s become involved. There must have been some personal association before Bravo’s accident. It’s the only answer.”