Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Rogue

Sci hesitated and took a deep breath. He gestured at the screen. I saw the tiny craters and formations of an atom. But, more importantly, inscribed around the atom was a series of stripes. Some were thick, others thin, but there appeared to be only two types of mark, and they ran across the atom in a seemingly random pattern.

I gave Sci a puzzled look

“Is that a form of code?” Justine asked.

“Looks like binary,” Sci replied, staring at the screen. “Well, this is quite a thing. Someone has figured out how to store vast quantities of data on real objects.”

He shifted the microscope and moved to another atom, where a similar pattern could be seen.

“I can’t believe it. This technology alone is worth billions,” Sci said excitedly. “But my guess is it’s the data they want back.”

He turned to Floyd. “You may have unwittingly stolen the most valuable object on the planet.”

“So someone has an atomic-scale engraving machine?” Justine asked.

“My guess is they have a box in a lab, probably in SVR headquarters in Yasenevo, that can use beams of single photons to burn data onto the atoms, certainly of metal objects, but why not other substances too? Once the object has been encoded, it is placed into either the same box or another, which acts as a reader to decode the data. Maybe there is even a portable reader you use to scan the object? There might only be a handful of readers in the world, so you can store the most precious secrets and never have to worry about being discovered or losing your data. Unless the object is stolen, of course.”

“Everyone just sees a bronze figure,” Floyd remarked.

“Exactly, but in reality it’s a vast data repository. The ultimate USB drive. How many atoms form the surface of this bull? Billions? Maybe trillions? Effectively limitless storage capacity on just this one object. I’m just...” Sci trailed off. “I’m just blown away. This is revolutionary.”

“Can you decode it?” I asked.

“Unlikely without a reader,” he replied. “I can capture as many images as I like and try to decipher them, but we’re talking about a painstaking process. Imagine trying to reconstruct a photograph from binary. Who knows how this data is parsed?”

“Do your best,” I said.

“What are you thinking, Jack?” Justine asked.

She knew me well enough to spot an idea forming.

“I’m thinking it’s time to call Victor Andreyev and tell him we’ve found Captain Floyd.”

I drove past the old factories, their broken windows framed by rusting steel. Towering chimneys reached toward the sky. No longer grand monuments to industry, instead they looked like the fingers of a dead and buried giant trying to claw its way out of the ground.

Andreyev had insisted on meeting somewhere isolated and remote, which was my first red flag. His requirement that I come alone was the second. I knew he had every intention of killing me, but this meeting was the only way we’d have any chance of saving Beth, Maria and Danny.

I’d chosen the old Baekeland Chemical Plant in Jersey, about forty minutes’ drive from Manhattan, and had agreed a time of 11 a.m. Andreyev was told we’d found Floyd and discovered he’d gone to retrieve the bronze bull. That made the deal very simple: Beth and the children were to be exchanged for it.

The Toyota Sequoia bounced along a neglected concrete service road. A thick covering of snow made it impossible to see the deep potholes, so I bumped and crunched my way toward three SUVs that were parked in the yard between three decaying chemical processing plants. The vehicles were surrounded by a complex network of pipes, tanks, gantries, and metal-and-concrete buildings. The dark gray clouds that brooded above the broken roofs and corroded pipes served to make the setting even more ominous.

Justine had been dead against my plan, and had taken me aside to plead with me not to go. It was a trap, a suicide mission. Why did I have to do the exchange? Could Floyd not go instead? With tears in her eyes, she’d told me she couldn’t bear to lose me again. I’d tried to soothe her fears, but didn’t think I was successful. I couldn’t even convince myself. What I was about to do was dangerous, and the thought of all the things that could go wrong set my heart racing. It was pounding furiously as I parked twenty yards from the other vehicles.

I reminded myself bravery wasn’t the absence of fear; it was action taken in the face of it. I grabbed my coat and stepped into the mid-morning chill. The rear doors of all three SUVs opened and two masked men stepped out of each vehicle. Victor Andreyev emerged from the front passenger seat of the center vehicle. He sauntered toward me with the confidence of a feudal king.

“Where is the Bull?” he asked.

“Where are Beth and the children?” I countered.

“Here.” He nodded toward the vehicle on my left. “Give me what I want and this problem will be over for both of us.”

I studied the man. He was a proven liar and a spy. There wasn’t a single reason I should trust him. He sneered at me as if challenging me to disprove how powerless I was. Beth and the children gave him a clear advantage over me, and he knew it.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why did you hire me?”

He smiled. “We needed to find the woman and you are an adequate investigator,” he replied, lingering on the word “adequate.” “Get the Bull and I will tell you where our interests aligned.”

I glowered at him before returning to the Toyota. I opened the driver’s door, leaned inside and grabbed the bronze from under the front seat. I left the door open and returned to Andreyev, who eyed the figure greedily.

“Tell me,” I pressed. “Why me?”

“There was a certain degree of opportunism involved,” Andreyev replied as he took the heavy bronze object. “‘Two birds with one stone,’ to use one of your American expressions. You see, Mr. Morgan, you made some powerful enemies in Moscow, and for a while they had to play nice, but when this chance came along, well, it was only ever going to end one way. The order for your engagement came directly from the Kremlin. As did this.”

He turned abruptly and yelled a command in Russian. As he hurried toward his car, his masked subordinates drew their weapons and stepped forward. I look around fearfully. This ruinous, rusting industrial wasteland was where I was destined to die.

The masked man closest to me raised his pistol. I backed toward the open car door. He aimed at my head, but never got the opportunity to pull the trigger. A terrifying rattle tore up the silence as a burst of bullets chewed the concrete directly in front of him and his accomplices. The six masked men were startled, and I took advantage of their shock to run toward the Toyota. The machine-gunfire continued and Andreyev barked commands. His masked gunmen turned their weapons on the source of the thunderous volley, but the window on the seventh floor of a warehouse to the east was too far away for an effective pistol shot. Two figures appeared intermittently in the aperture, but only in silhouette, vanishing between every burst of muzzle flash. Their machine guns spat flames and bullets and created chaos. Andreyev’s gunmen took cover behind their vehicles as the rounds shredded concrete, drilled through steel and shattered glass.

I jumped through the Toyota’s open door, landed in the driver’s seat, threw the car into gear and stepped on the gas. A couple masked men saw what I was doing and shot wildly at the car as I sped away, but their bullets went wide. As I put distance between me and my would-be killers, I looked in the rear-view and saw them scramble into their vehicles, which were being riddled by bullets. The three SUVs fled the scene under a hail of gunfire, which followed them until they disappeared behind a chemical processing facility west of the courtyard.