Alex ordered a beer despite Lisa’s protests, and felt some of the tension start to drain away. She was among friends. It wasn’t much, given the threat to the people she loved, and to all of humanity, but at that moment it felt like the most important thing in the world.
For a time, they chatted about Polish drinks and food. Vijay had sampled a lime mead that he said was truly dreadful, and the team related a disastrous attempt to order pizza at a Polish restaurant that had resulted in being served a cheese-covered crust and a pitcher full of ketchup. A nearby Polish bookstore had a bigger section for books about the Pope than it did for novels, and one of the ten TV channels they could get from their hotel was entirely devoted to the Vatican.
“And don’t get me started about the toilet paper,” Rod said.
Alex laughed with them, but eventually the conversation slowed to a halt. She hesitated, not wanting to break the spell, but knowing she had to. “There are some things I have to explain to you guys,” she said.
She told them everything. About the varcolac and its attacks, about Sandra, about Jean Massey and why she and Ryan had really come.
“So… you’re heading behind enemy lines?” Tequila asked. “Turkey’s a big place. How will you even know where to go?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I didn’t really think that far. I guess I thought it would be making itself obvious.”
“Once it makes itself obvious, it’ll be too late,” Vijay said. “It’s probably too late anyway.”
“Thanks, that’s a big help, Mr. Cheerful,” Tequila said. She touched some beer to her fingers and spritzed it in his face. “I bet you’re a miserable drunk.”
“It sounds like the best thing we can do is to incorporate the teleportation and invisibility modules into our training,” Rod said. “Put it in the hands of as many of our troops as possible, and educate the officers and general staff, so they’ll figure out how to use them effectively. There’s nothing you can do by heading off into Turkey alone. You’ll just get yourself killed.”
“I’m afraid the advance teams are walking into a trap right now,” Alex said. “If the Turks already have the technology—worse, if the varcolac is there—then they may not get out alive. But I don’t know where they are, and Nicole wouldn’t tell me.”
“I know where they are,” Lisa said softly.
Everyone looked at her. She blushed. “I got on a bit with one of the guys on your brother’s squad,” she said. “He let slip where they were headed. One of the targets, anyway.”
“Where?” Alex asked.
“I don’t understand it. It was why he mentioned it; it was so strange a target.”
“Spit it out!”
“The Jozef Stefan Institute. It’s a scientific facility in Slovenia.”
There was silence at the table. Alex had been expecting military targets near the front lines—radar installations or fuel depots or anti-aircraft weapons. They were only a few miles from Slovenia, but what was the importance of this institute? Were they stockpiling weapons there? Or developing them? The name rang a bell, but Alex couldn’t figure out where she had heard it. Jozef Stefan Institute. “Of course!” Alex’s mouth hung open as a rush of adrenaline hit her. “That’s it. That’s where Jean will be.”
“Wait, how do you know?” Tequila asked. “What’s there?”
“They have a particle accelerator. It’s a small one, relatively low energies, nothing like the NJSC or CERN. But it’s probably the only accelerator in all of Turkish-controlled territory. If they want to make more Higgs projectors, enough for their whole army, then that’s where they’ll do it.”
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Tequila said.
Alex realized she was on her feet. “I have to. Sean and his team don’t know what they’re heading toward. The varcolac will tear them apart.”
“How will you get there?”
Alex started pacing, two steps one way, three steps the next. “I don’t know. I need the coordinates. The exact coordinates.”
“I can help you with that,” Rod said.
“How?”
“I have access to the bombing dictionary.”
That got everyone’s attention. “Why on Shiva’s third eye would they give you access to that?” Vijay asked.
“They didn’t exactly give it to me,” Rod said with an impish grin. “I was helping the major get his laptop on the network, and, well…”
“You devious little hacker,” Tequila said.
“Anyway, I can get the coordinates. Some of them they have down to less than a meter.”
The whole group stood, pulling euro notes out of their wallets and leaving them on the table.
“You can stay,” Alex said. “You’ve had a long day; I’m sure Rod can get me what I need without the rest of your help.”
“You don’t understand,” Tequila said. “We’re coming with you.”
“To Slovenia? Don’t be stupid.”
Tequila raised an eyebrow.
“You’re not soldiers. There’s no reason for you to come.”
“If you fail, we all die anyway, right?” Lisa said.
“Well… yes.”
“So, if there’s any chance we can help, we might as well come.”
Alex smiled. “I guess you’re right.” These were true friends, willing to follow her behind enemy lines, purely on the strength of her word that it was important. She hoped she didn’t get them all killed.
“I knew it,” Vijay said. “Somehow I always knew I wouldn’t live past forty-five.”
CHAPTER 23
Sandra’s headache was in full force now, like a tide of pain washing through her scalp. She tried to ignore it, concentrating on the graphs in front of her. An empty pizza box and cups of soda were scattered around her, the remains of a dinner now long finished. She was getting hungry again, though she knew her body probably needed sleep more than it needed food.
Her father’s phone had been crammed with data, so much so that it was difficult to determine what was important and what wasn’t. She had sorted by date modified, to start out with, and immediately found the data that Angel had sent her the day after the stadium explosion, showing the pattern of the blast. She located her father’s analysis of it, too, the ten-dimensional look that turned all the crazy lines into simple, coherent curves. But what had been so sensitive and important that he felt the need to hide his phone in the toaster?
She gradually pushed backward in time. He had obviously been using the phone for a great deal of analysis and study of quantum effects, far more than she would have expected from a retired scientist. He still taught some courses locally, at Swarthmore College, but this was high-level stuff, a personal project of some kind that seemed to have been going on for years.
It took her a long time before she figured out that the target of the study was herself.
“He’s been monitoring me,” she said. “Me and Alex both. For years. Since the beginning.” By the beginning, she meant the split, the point at which she and Alex had ceased to be Alessandra and had taken different paths. “He’s been gathering data at a quantum level.” She stared at it further. “I think it’s in our phones. He hid some kind of device into our phones that monitors us and sends the data back to him.” She looked up at her mother. “Did you know about this?”
She shook her head. “No. He didn’t say anything.”
“What was he looking for?” Angel asked.
She knew. The math was beyond her, but she knew what he must have been studying. She and Alex were a quantum fluke, a probability wave that refused to collapse. Every other probability wave in their crazy lives had collapsed, a single path taking precedence. Even her father’s own experience, both in prison and out of it at the same time, had eventually come back together. But she and Alex hadn’t. For fifteen years.