It did not escape her how far removed she was from her old life. In the matter of a few days, she’d gone from being a CGIS investigator in Alaska to impersonating a homeless person in Austria. For Lund, it was perhaps the most profound manifestation of META’s insanity. All the same, that maelstrom had also brought Trey into her life, and for that she was grateful.
She had just finished breakfast when she noticed a dark-skinned young man reading an English-language newspaper. With his face buried in the central pages, Lund went closer, and on the front page she saw a picture of the Bundespolizei station where last night’s tragedy had unfolded. Thankfully, her own picture was not splashed next to it.
She peered around the paper to see the man’s face, and realized he was very young — seventeen or eighteen, she guessed.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The young man looked at her.
“May I see that when you’re done?”
“American?” he replied.
She nodded.
“My English no much good.”
The rising question of why he was reading an English-language paper was answered when he slipped one page clear — the football news, which included a number of action photos. He handed her the rest.
“Thank you,” she said.
He gestured to a team photo on the page he’d retained. “Manchester United!” he said, and with no less enthusiasm than a lifelong season-ticket holder.
“Yay!” Lund replied, adding an exaggerated smile.
She backed away, settled on a nearby chair, and began studying the newspaper. Two articles covered the station shooting. One delivered the facts, and the second was an editorial on the woeful state of the Bundespolizei — according to the writer, a direct result of the right-leaning government’s penny-pinching ways. Lund concentrated on the fact-based article and learned that, as of press time, little headway had been made in the case. The suspect in the shootings, described only as a heavily built man with a clean-shaven head, was still at large. An American woman wanted for questioning had also not been found. One anonymous police source floated the idea that the two might be in cahoots. Alternately, a government spokesman speculated that the woman might well turn up as victim number six.
For Lund it changed nothing. She discarded the paper and began walking through a room where fifty other refugees were milling about — people with whom she felt a surprising degree of camaraderie. She quickly found what she needed. A man with a wristwatch.
“Can you tell me what time it is?”
A fifty-something cross between George Clooney and a train hobo looked at her blankly.
She pointed to his watch, and his face brightened. He cocked his wrist toward her. It was 11:03.
“Dammit!”
Patel had been due to speak at ten. Lund had no idea she’d slept so long. She rushed for the exit, and burst outside into a cold wind and a blinding sun. After taking a moment to get her bearings, she hurried off in the direction of the Hofburg Vienna.
Back in the shelter, the man with the watch wondered what all the fuss was about. He was Armenian, a taxi driver before his car had been confiscated by Turkish soldiers when his Chinese-made GPS receiver had led him astray near a disputed border area — another incidental casualty of globalization. He looked away from the door, checked his watch, and perhaps saw the problem. His watch was still set to Armenian time — the thing had five buttons, and he really didn’t know how to work them.
He shrugged it off.
Technology, he thought. It will be the death of us all.
With the specter of Delta lurking at every corner, DeBolt kept his movements to a minimum. After catching a few hours of sleep in the mail alcove of an apartment building, he had risen shortly after first light and worked his way cautiously toward the Hofburg Vienna. He’d skirted major roads, keeping to alleys wherever possible. In the gloom of dawn he’d regarded the backsides of buildings that appeared rough-hewn and weathered, the stains of centuries like scars on a battle-weary soldier.
He used the map in his head to avoid areas where green — readily available — CCTV coverage existed. He walked under a raised section of highway for a time, and where that ended he followed a polluted ditch overgrown with vegetation. Next came a dirt path that edged the backyards of a row of brownstone homes. At one he saw a clothesline near the back fence, a pair of pants and a shirt, roughly his size, fluttering in the early breeze. The clothes he was wearing were hopelessly soiled, doomed by last night’s rain-sodden getaway and a night spent on a concrete floor. DeBolt made the switch. The pants were a marginal fit, but his belt made them work, and the shirt was two sizes too large. He left a hundred-dollar bill on a clothespin.
His approach became more cautious when the Imperial Palace came into view. He moved from alley to alcove, and imagined Delta doing the same. At the very least, he found comfort on that one point — when it came to CCTV monitoring, he and the assassin had found level ground. But what am I missing? DeBolt wondered. What tricks does Delta know that I don’t?
Steps away from the palace commons, he paused to study the grounds. Between him and the conference entrance were a busy road, walking paths, and rows of overmanaged topiary clinging to the green of summer. Beyond that he faced a fifty-yard expanse of stone terrace. It was all open and vulnerable, and from a security standpoint probably the most heavily monitored acre in all of Austria. If Delta was surveilling any single place, this would be it.
DeBolt wondered if there was some way he could remain outside and intercept Patel, catch him on his way in. As far as he knew, there was only one entrance. Appealing as it was, the idea had one critical flaw — he had no idea what the man looked like.
But might there be a way?
He considered his new skill set, desperate for a fresh approach. The answer came out of nowhere on the sidewalk in front of him. It was wearing a lanyard.
“Excuse me!”
Matthias Schulze turned around and saw a young man with a bad haircut approaching him on a jog. His hand was raised in the air like a cop holding up traffic.
“Yes?” Schulze said.
The man pulled to a stop a few steps away. “Are you attending the cyber security conference?”
Schulze’s conference badge was hanging from his neck on a lanyard. He smiled, and said, “I think there is no denying it.” He was proud of his English, even if the occasional word got crushed under his Hamburg accent.
“I was wondering … do you have a conference brochure? The one that lists the schedule?”
Schulze was carrying his leather organizer — he was German, after all. “Yes, I think I have it here.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I left mine in my hotel room, and I’m not sure about the schedule today. I traveled here all the way from the University of Alaska, in Anchorage. There are some interesting topics I don’t want to miss.”
Schulze smiled. “Then let me help — you have come a very long way.”
He dug into a pocket of his portfolio and quickly found it. He handed the guide over, saying, “I am a professor at the University of Hamburg. I recommend Albrecht’s talk this afternoon on parallel processing.”
The American took the conference guide and began flipping through it. “Yes, parallel processing.”