Twisted Spaces: 1 / Destination Mars Page 8

  MacMillan knew he had to pass that little detail on to Geneva promptly. He turned to Ellie: ''Baby, please ask Jackie to prepare another drone run ASAP, this time a freight transport targeted at Leclerc. I'll prepare the package.''

  Chapter 29

  Beijing

  Thursday, 03.11.2016

  As soon as Chan Li had been summoned to the meeting with the chairman, she had known it to be a trap. Her superior had repeatedly and openly demonstrated his displeasure at her independent work style, out and out viewing her as a security risk. It was he who had dropped the satellite job on her, expecting her to fail. When she came up with her statement, not to be able to decode the video stream, he hadn't even bothered to ask for further conclusions, just decided to take her along, hoping she would talk herself over the edge. And that she had done, well in one way.

  Being an educated woman in China, she expected to be disadvantaged in her male-dominated profession, and then there was her other flaw.

  Trust came hard to Chinese bureaucrats anyway - communists by heart - and her parentage was more than suspicious to them: her father had been one of the demonstrators killed in Tiananmen square in 1989 and she had been raised by a single parent mother who had never married again.

  Having been bullied in school by the other kids as daughter of a traitor, she had at first fought back, but later turned inward. During the medium and higher classes she had developed a crush on mathematics, a passion she continued to develop privately, after school.

  In the end it didn't matter: the state remained suspicious. Only her outstanding grades in her mathematics courses, together with the decisive intervention of her school's principal, had made it possible for her to enter university and study - not her favourite subject, but at least something close to it.

  With this personal history she would never have dared to apply for a job at a state agency, let alone the eminently respectable Intelligence Service. So she accepted the idea of earning her living in one of the IT sweatshops of Beijing, writing unimportant programs, maybe stealing secrets from western companies.

  But as with so many things in life, it had turned out quite differently. Unknown to the students the Chinese Red Army had been running an operation to get their hands on more talented youngsters. It being a communist country that was easy enough: they simply assembled a list of wanted subjects and issued an order to all universities to forward the names of the top two percent of their graduates to them.

  That year Li's name was on the top-10 list for computer-science at the University of Beijing, and there in first place, rightfully so: her grades were outstanding - in theoretical information technology she had the highest score of the last three decades - and her intelligence quota floated somewhere above one-sixty.

  So, on the day after the diploma had been handed to the young woman, she received a written order - the state had no need to invite - from the hands of a stern looking courier, summoning her to an evaluation center the next day.

  With no choice in the matter, Chan made her appearance, sat with about fifty other youngsters, waiting to be tested. Again it turned out differently than expected. While the others were herded away, a grave looking woman had taken her into her office and immediately started questioning her about her parents. Li understood perfectly: this was the main issue they had with her. Although she had kept herself completely out of view of the state security, always attending the scheduled political instruction meetings, could present a very good testimony from her political officer - they did not trust her.

  After two hours of grilling, the interview was over and, without any comment or hint, she was ordered to return home - to her room at the students' dormitory. There, on her kitchen table, she found a drafting order of the Chinese Red Army, IT division, cryptography department, for the following Monday. And so it had begun.

  Moving her few belongings to her new office hadn't even taken two hours. One more hour with building security to get photographed and questioned, and, after being handed an identity card, a guard escorted her to her new office. That turned out to be a cabinet sized cubicle deep within the analysis department's wing of the intelligence services complex.

  It was tiny, sure, but a hundred times better than the open-plan work place she had to use before. She also found it completely prepared: equipped with felt tip pens, paper note pads, a terminal to the secure intel network, her own PC from IT, even - in consideration of who would read the reports - a new laser printer. An office chair, standard government issue, a large desk, same quality. An order from the chairman, it seemed, went a very long way, even among the admin pukes.

  A two foot high stack of paper files sat on the desk, all with a SECRET - return to storage before leaving label attached. Lastly - a note, unsigned: Report is to be delivered at noon tomorrow.

  High noon, Chan thought amused. No hint to whom or about what to report. Just great. The General would not expect her to come around with significant findings within only a day, but thinking of him, his warning popped up in her mind. Backstabbing bureaucrats. That's what he must have meant. Well, she had been harassed before. However, there was work in front of her, and she was used to work. Top priority: get an overview.

  She pulled the note pad and a pen to her, took the first folder, opened it. It was in Standard Mandarin and titled 'CERN Project funding 1985 - today'. She sighed. Bureaucratic bullshit, dumped on her for diversion. Next. 'Complete CERN Staff Register 1985 - today'.

  She also put it aside and took the next one.

  Chapter 30

  Geneva/CERN

  Friday, 04.11.2016

  Leclerc sipped at his first coffee of the morning. As had been his habit ever since he joined his nations military service thirty years ago, he started every single day at CERN with an army-sized pot of excellent French brew. Marcel, his assistant - actually his faithful personal adjutant and a retired senior master sergeant of the Legion who followed him everywhere - saw to that. Feet on his desk and leaning back, he contemplated the events of the last ten or so days. CERN sure was a crazy place with even crazier people, but this definitely was an all-time high. Anti-gravitation, antimatter mass production ..., he shook his head. Christ, what would come next? A space station in Mars orbit? An interstellar vessel?

  His desk phone rang and ripped him out of his thoughts. No caller id ... now that was unusual: nobody beside Kaiser had that number. He picked up the receiver: ''Yes?''

  ''Bonjour Colonel,'' an unknown female voice said, continuing in French: ''Please open your westward window. Au revoir.'' The connection broke.

  Leclerc stared shortly at the receiver, then replaced it and walked over to his western office wall. He looked out of the mentioned window and saw a mini drone floating there - not a meter away. The Colonel opened the window and the drone immediately moved forward, stopping right in front of him. It turned and hovered. Leclerc looked closer ad saw a cigarette-box sized dark green pack under the little machine. When he reached out for it, the pack was released and fell into his hand - it was unexpectedly heavy. The drone, freed from its cargo, jumped a meter upward, compensated, then turned out of the window again. In a second it was gone.

  Paul closed the window and returned to his desk and his coffee. Placing the box on the table and reaching for his cup, he just kept wondering: CERN definitely was the strangest fucking place he had ever worked at. The box wouldn't be a bomb: the best moment to eliminate him had been when he was staring mindlessly at the hovering drone. So what ...

  The whole box suddenly started to blink: yellow, green yellow, green ... Leclerc picked it up. As soon as he touched it the blinking stopped and a second later another voice sounded up.

  ''Bonjour, mon Colonel.''

  The connection was a bit scratchy, with a weird low background noise, but Leclerc recognised the speaker at once: ''Bonjour, monsieur MacMillan.''

  ''What you have in your hand,'' the voice continued in French, ''is a very special communicator. A radio set working on a quantum l
evel, fresh out of the press. Not perfect yet, but up to now not interceptable. We would like to use it as our private communication line to you, so I would appreciate it if you kept it secret.''

  ''Quantum based communication?''

  ''Oui, mon Colonel. Unusual, but very, very secure. Anyway. We need to talk.''

  Leclerc normally wouldn't have tolerated the 'mon Colonel' salutation - he wasn't that man's officer, but for some reason he hesitated with a reprimand. Instead he said: ''How can I be of service?''

  ''We think you have a leak on your side, mon Colonel.''

  That made Leclerc listen up: ''How so?''

  ''The Chinese have found our trap door in their comm satellite. Impossible without an external hint.''

  ''And you suspect us?''

  ''Not you, personally, of course, you are beyond suspicion.'' Both knew that this wasn't entirely true, if worst came to worst the Colonel had his obligations, too. ''But one of the people listening in on our last little chat must have spilled the beans to Beijing.''

  After a short moment of consideration Leclerc replied: ''Not impossible. We tried to keep it all under a tight lid, of course, but ...''

  ''I know: scientists. Can be like children.''

  That made the Colonel laugh: ''Yes.''

  ''Problem is: if the Chinese contact was in the room, the satellite trap door isn't all they know of.''

  ''They would have the whole conversation.''

  ''Right. But that was to be expected,'' MacMillan said. ''The way we picked up contact was prone to break our secret existence into the open.''

  ''You accepted that risk?''

  ''Yes, but we needed to start talking. Time is running out.''

  ''Your estimation, mon ami?''

  ''Less than a week.''

  ''I agree. What do you want me to do?''

  ''Everything you can, mon Colonel.''

  ''To help, I need your location.''

  ''And you will get it. But: you must be very, very discreet. And, mon Colonel, I want you to grab two injectors from the first production batch of antimatter as soon as they are available and bring them to us ASAP.''

  That took Leclerc aback. Antimatter was inherently dangerous, even in the smallest quantities. A few weeks ago he had been invited by Kaiser to watch an annihilation of a microgram - and left the laboratory very impressed. Two injectors - that meant a full kilogram ... the equivalent to roughly forty thousand kilotons of TNT, over a thousand times the explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb. He took a breath: ''I'll have to think about that.''

  ''Fair enough. I've got to tend to other things now, mon Colonel. If you want to call me, just pick up the communicator and squeeze it a bit. Connection build-up is instantaneous, but I might need a second or two to grab my counterpart. Maybe even someone else will answer.''

  ''Understood. Later, then.''

  ''Au revoir.''

  A terrible indecision grabbed the Colonel's heart. After a while of kicking the facts around, he realised that he needed someone to confide in. There was only one; he called out: ''Marcel.''

  The door opened at once and an older man came it, stood at attention.

  ''Colonel?''

  ''Sit, my friend, I need your advice.''

  It took just the better half of an hour. The sergeant worked as an adjutant for his beloved Colonel, but was by no way stupid. He had earned his spurs in the burning sands of Africa, side by side with this then young officer. They had fought with cannons and rifles, sabres and knives, on foot, horse, and tanks and knew what combat and killing was really about. Having had his ass saved more than once at point blank range by his Sous-Lieutenant and having returned the favour time after time, a deep and unconditional friendship had developed between him and his protègè that no ordinary man could understand. They were a world-class combat team, the sergeant and his Colonel, be it in the deserts of Sierra Leone or at CERN, fighting the bureaucrats. Not that this was very often necessary here, their 'General' Kaiser was unconditionally on their side, with the integrity of a real General officer, and anyone who dared to mess with the director's security chief - or his adjutant - was mercilessly mauled. Kaiser didn't give a shit about the complainer's patronage or possible consequences - you fucked with security and you were gone - and with this Kaiser had earned the loyalty of his men.

  The situation was quite clear to Marcel: the Colonel's main concern was, that this obscure group of nutters was kidnapped by the Chinese, Russians, Americans or whoever before they could a) escape - to outer space or wherever, Marcel didn't give jack shit - and/or b) pass their secrets on to CERN. The important thing was: one of them seemed to trust the Colonel and he had a discreet comm link to the bunch. Marcel also didn't give a rat's ass about the moral or political dimension of this mess - that was his Colonel's part - he just concentrated on the military aspect of the situation: ''They need protection, mon Colonel. And a lot. If the Chinese really are involved ... a whole fucking lot.''

  That address 'mon Colonel' made Leclerc somehow uneasy today: ''Marcel, this is more important than anything we have ever undertaken. This will change the world. What do you suggest?''

  ''Same as always, mon Colonel. RPDA.''

  That was good advice: recon, plan, decide, act. ''Which first?''

  ''We need their location, mon Colonel. Then I will pay them a discreet visit. And I need to make a phone call.'' He pointed at the box. ''As you do.''

  Leclerc picked up the communicator, squeezed it. It blinked a few times, then Michael's voice sounded up: ''Mon Colonel?''

  ''I'll do it. Two injectors, handed over as soon as I can get them. What guarantees do you need?''

  ''Your word, mon Colonel, will be totally sufficient.''

  ''You have it. Give me your location.''

  Michael dictating geodesic coordinates. ''Take a look on Google,'' he invited, ''I'll wait.''

  Leclerc fired up his computer, started Google Earth and entered the coordinates. A few clicks later he had a screen-filling, detailed picture of the location and its surroundings. Both, the Colonel and his adjutant looked at each other in total surprise: So close? Then two combat trained eyes scanned the area sharply, looking for cover, obstacles, killing fields, ambush and fall-back positions, places for their snipers.

  ''Intel says the picture is still good,'' Michael offered after five minutes of silence.

  ''Sorry, we just ...'' Leclerc spluttered.

  ''I know. Old habits die hard. Let me give you some more intel.'' Then he named country, area, next town, nearest airports, train stations, best access streets and escape routes. ''From bus central, line 56 stops right in front of our hall. Departs every full hour,'' he finished.

  ''I'll send a man,'' Leclerc announced, ''to look for himself.''

  ''Recon mission, sure. Your adjutant, monsieur Dupont?''

  ''Yes.''

  ''He's welcome. Now, my intel guys want me to pass this to you: they suggest he wear slightly dirty blue-collar work clothing, car mechanic type, carry a big bag - doughnuts or Fleischwurst in rings are in high demand around here and we are forty two - and just walk up to the hall. Give our guardian the password in passing - it's Jules Lefebre'' - that drew a sharp frown from Marcel - ''... then just walk to the left door. The code for its lock is one-five-nine-three-five-seven.'' He paused a bit so they could take down notes, then repeated: ''One-five-nine-three-five-seven. Also, if he comes by car, they suggest he places it in the car park left of the building: that's ours. Naturally it should be a fitting, not too clean model for a workman and have local tags. They emphasize that it's essential he acts as if he's one of the crew, just back from fetching a bite. So noon would be a good time.''

  Leclerc was flattened - they had anticipated this move, and thought it through. Recovering, he said: ''Sensible arrangement. Anything else?''

  ''No. Well, please call us a few minutes before he arrives and ask him to act slow around our security chaps at first, especially if he's carrying. Kids are a bit nervous and of the shooter type.
'' Meaning: shoot first, ask later.

  ''I understand.'' Totally. ''He'll be with you soon.''

  ''Au revoir, mon Colonel.''

  ''Au revoir.''

  The link broke.

  ''Jules Lefebre,'' Marcel repeated. That was the name of a revered Legion Sous-Lieutenant who had died in Mazari Sharif, during a legendary shoot-out. After he and a handful of troopers had killed over two hundred extremists that day and conquered a Taliban stronghold. ''They are awfully well informed, mon Colonel.'' He accentuated the last two words.

  ''Yes. Very disconcerting. Also he calls me 'mon Colonel' all the time. Why do you think he does that?''

  ''Sounded sincere to me, like he ran into our lot before. I think he respects you. Lots of military slang; probably has combat background - maybe even Afghanistan. How else would he know of Sous-Lieutenant Lefebre? And he sure understands security. Anyway, I'll pack my bags now.'' He stood, looked at his colonel. ''Will you tell Kaiser? Or just snatch the injectors?''

  ''I'll wait with that decision until we know more. RPDA, you know.'' He smiled at his old friend. ''Yes, better leave soon. And get some ordnance, it could get rough.''

  Marcel nodded and rose: time for some action.

  Chapter 31

  Beijing

  Friday, 04.11.2016

  Chan was merciless - with herself. Ten hours after she had entered her mini-office she was sifting through the last bureaucratic bullshit, throwing the unusable files on one heap and producing a far smaller stack with real information to play with. Tomorrow. She stretched, leaned back, feeling totally burned out and longing for a bed.

  The cubicle's door suddenly opened, startling her. From the corner of her eyes she registered a man entering. Chan turned around - and froze. General Xao stood right there, beside her desk.