Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

The first book in the Jonathan Ransom series, 2008

The cold breeze swept across the plain, carrying the butterfly on its drafts. The remarkable insect flitted about, climbing, diving, arcing high and low. It was a beautiful specimen, its wings colored a vivid yellow with a latticework of black, and unlike any in the region. It had an unusual name, too: Papilio panoptes.

The butterfly flew over the custodial road, over the electrified security fence, and over the rolls of barbed wire. Beyond the fence lay a field of wildflowers, stunning in their variety and color. There were no structures anywhere to be seen: no houses, no barns, no buildings of any type. Only the mounds of freshly impacted soil, barely distinguishable beneath the flower canopy, gave evidence of the recently completed work.

Despite its long voyage, the butterfly ignored the flowers. It did not seek their richly scented pollen or feast on their sweet nectar. Instead, it chose to fly higher, seeming to gain its sustenance from the air itself.

And there it stayed, a shimmering yellow flag against the pale winter sky. It did not land on a lavender bush to rest. It did not drink from any of the rushing streams that descended from the harsh, majestic mountains and ran across the fertile grasslands. In fact, never once did it venture outside the fence’s precisely established one-square-kilometer perimeter. Content to hover over the colorful fields, it flew back and forth, day after day, night after night, never eating, never drinking, never resting.

After seven days, a fierce wind, the nashi, visited from the north. The wind roared down the mountain passes and hurtled across the plains, gathering velocity and force and pummeling everything in its path. The butterfly could not fight the relentless drafts. Its circuits inside the perimeter had left it worn and vulnerable. A swirling gust picked it up, spun it round, and dashed it to the ground, shattering its fragile body.

A guard patrolling the custodial road caught the flash of yellow lying in the dirt and stopped his jeep. He approached cautiously, kneeling in the ankle-deep grass. It was not like any butterfly he had seen before. First of all, it was larger. Its wings were rigid, with jagged bits of a paper-thin metal protruding from the silken skin. The fuzzy thorax was split in two and connected by a green wire. Mystified, he picked it up and examined it. Like all those who worked at the facility, he was first and foremost an engineer, and only reluctantly a soldier. What he saw left him shaken.

Inside the thorax was an aluminum-cased battery no bigger than a grain of rice, and attached to it, a microwave transmitter. Using his thumbnail, he sheared away the antennae’s skin to reveal a cluster of fiber-optic cables, thin as human hair.

No, he argued to himself. It could not be. Not so soon.

Suddenly, he was running back to the jeep. Words tore through his mind. Explanations. Theories. None made sense. An exposed stone caught his foot and he crashed to the ground. Clambering to his feet, he hurried toward the jeep. Every minute was vital.

His hand shook as he radioed his superiors.

“They have found us.”

Jonathan Ransom knocked the ice from his goggles and stared up at the sky. If this gets any worse, he thought to himself, we’re going to be in trouble. The snow was falling harder. A snarling wind snapped ice and grit against his cheek. The craggy, familiar peaks that ringed the high alpine valley had disappeared behind an armada of threatening clouds.

He lifted one ski, then the next, leaning forward as he climbed the slope. Nylon sealskins attached to the underside of his skis gripped the snow. Touring bindings granted him a walking stride. He was a tall man, thirty-seven years old, slim at the waist and broad-shouldered. A snug woolen cap hid a thatch of prematurely graying hair. Glacier goggles shielded wine black eyes. Only a determined mouth and cheeks rough with a two-day stubble were visible. He wore his old ski patrolman’s jacket. He never climbed without it.

Below him, his wife, Emma, clad in a red parka and black pants, labored up the mountainside. Her pace was erratic. She climbed three steps, then rested. Two steps, then rested. They’d only just passed the halfway point and already she looked done in.

Jonathan turned his skis perpendicular to the hill and rammed his poles into the snow. “Stay put,” he shouted through cupped hands. He waited for an acknowledgment, but his wife hadn’t heard him over the howling wind. Head lowered, she continued her unsteady ascent.

Jonathan sidestepped his way down the slope. It was steep and narrow, bordered on one side by a sheer rock face and on the other by a plunging ravine. Far below, perched on a sweeping hillside, the village of Arosa in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden was intermittently visible, winking from beneath the strata of fast-moving clouds.

“Was it always this hard?” Emma asked when he reached her side.

“Last time you beat me to the top.”

“Last time was eight years ago. I’m getting old.”

“Yeah, thirty-two. A regular dinosaur. Just wait till you’re my age, then it’s really all downhill.” He dug into his daypack for a bottle of water and handed it to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Half dead,” she said, hunching over her poles. “Time to call the Sherpas.”

“Wrong country. Here they have gnomes. They’re smarter, but not half as strong. We’re on our own.”

“Sure about that?”

Jonathan nodded. “You’re just overheating. Take your cap off for a minute and drink as much as you can.”

“Yes, Doctor. Right away.” Emma removed her woolen cap and drank thirstily from the bottle.

In his mind, Jonathan had a picture of her on the same mountain eight years earlier. It was their first climb together. He, the newly minted surgeon fresh from his first posting in Africa with Doctors Without Borders; she, the willful English nurse he’d brought back as his bride. Before they started out, he’d asked her if she’d climbed much before. “A little,” she’d answered. “Nothing too serious.” In short order, she’d clobbered him to the top, showing off the skills of an expert alpinist.

“That’s better,” said Emma, running a hand through her untamed auburn hair.

“You sure?”

Emma smiled, but her hazel eyes were rimmed with fatigue. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For not being as fit as I should be. For slowing us down. For not coming with you these last few years.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m just glad you’re here.”

Emma lifted her face and kissed him. “Me, too.”

“Look,” he said more seriously. “It’s getting ugly out here. I’m thinking maybe we ought to turn back.”

Emma tossed the bottle to him. “No way, buster. I beat you up this hill once. Watch me do it again.”

“You willing to put money on that?”

“Something better.”

“Oh yeah?” Jonathan took a drink, thinking that it was good to hear her talking trash again. How long had it been? Six months? A year even, since the headaches had begun and Emma had taken to disappearing into dark rooms for hours at a time. He wasn’t sure of the date. Only that it was before Paris, and Paris had been back in July.

Pulling back his sleeve, he ran through the functions on his Suunto wristwatch. Altitude: 9,200 feet. Temperature: -10° Celsius. Barometer: 900 millibars and falling. He stared at the numbers, not quite believing his eyes. The pressure was dropping through the floor.