Rick Mofina - Free Fall

What happened here? Looks like a couple of file cabinets exploded.

Layers of papers, files, reports, manuals and schematic drawings blanketed the table and the desk next to it.

Varner studied the material.

All of it related to Richlon-Titan’s fly-by-wire system.

Varner picked up printouts of Kate Page’s stories.

Paragraphs were highlighted, including excerpts of the Zarathustra email.

Varner swallowed hard.

We’ve got to find Robert Cole, now!

Then his eyes narrowed on a manuscript and the title page.

The author was Veyda Hyde.

Varner turned the cover to the first page with a gloved finger. At the top was a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche and Zarathustra. Varner blinked and flipped back to the title page.

Veyda Hyde.

Who’s that?

Boston, Massachusetts

Rachel Rinchley twisted and untwisted the strap of her briefcase as she rode the T from MIT to the downtown City Hall stop.

Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this.

She questioned herself repeatedly while standing across the street from the nine-story, crescent-shaped complex known as Center Plaza.

No, I have to tell them. They have to know.

Rachel entered One Center Plaza, passed through security, clipped on her visitor badge and went to the sixth floor, the location of the FBI’s Boston Field Office.

She waited in the reception area until the agent she’d spoken with earlier on the phone, Kay Howard, came out and took her to a quiet office.

“We appreciate your coming downtown, Ms. Rinchley. What’s the important information you wanted to share with the FBI?”

Rachel withdrew her copy of Veyda Hyde’s troubling doctoral paper, passed it to Agent Howard, then proceeded to tell her why she was convinced that Veyda was the author of the Zarathustra emails.

“She’s brilliant,” Rachel began. “She used to be known as Veyda Cole, and she was originally researching aircraft systems engineering, computational engineering, controls, communications and networks, until her mother was killed…”

Ottawa, Canada

In downtown Ottawa Tucker Ollenck rubbed his reddened eyes.

He hadn’t slept since he’d read the news story online about the FBI’s search for the people behind the Zarathustra emails in connection with that plane crash in London.

He knew exactly who that was. Problem was, he wasn’t sure if he should alert the FBI.

He went to the window of his fifteenth-floor office in the Canadian capital, where he worked with a global IT firm, and stared at the Peace Tower for an answer to his dilemma. After a long, troubled moment, he returned to his desk, went to the FBI’s website for the New York Field Office.

He scrawled the number on yellow note paper.

He rolled down his sleeves, slid on his jacket and told the office manager that he was taking an early lunch.

Tucker walked east across the Mackenzie King Bridge, over the canal to the Rideau Centre, the major downtown mall. He bought a disposable phone and a prepaid card. Then he went back outside to the bridge, and while gazing upon the canal toward the castle-like spires of the Chateau Laurier Hotel, he made an anonymous call to the FBI in New York.

After a few general questions he was put on hold.

Several moments passed, and he was connected.

“FBI, Agent Brock.”

“Sir, I’ve got information about your search for Zarathustra.”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t want to give you my identity.”

“That’s fine. Go ahead.”

“I went to Stanford and became good friends with Seth Hagen. The guy’s a computer engineering legend. He made a fortune developing video game systems, but he became something of a social recluse, said he didn’t really like people.”

“Okay…”

“He sort of dropped off the grid, but I kept in touch. I think I was one of the few people he talked to. Then he surprised me when he said he’d met this girl, Veyda, online. Seth never praised anyone, but he told me how she had a brilliant mind and he was in love. She was attending MIT, but dropped out. He said her paper about some wild theory on the philosophies of Hegel and Nietzsche had blown him away.

“He let me read it before I had dinner with them when I was in Washington, DC. I’ll never forget it. The paper was chilling. It supported killing people to advance society. I got such a weird vibe off Veyda. The woman struck me as being even smarter than Seth, but very, very scary.”

“Scary how?”

“Her eyes. It was like she was dead inside. I honestly thought they had both lost their minds the way they were talking about extraordinary people, free will, the right to commit crimes without conscience. It was all kind of disturbing.”

“Do you have a surname for the woman?”

“The woman’s name is Veyda Hyde. The email excerpts could’ve been pulled from her paper. I swear that’s her. Moreover, she was studying aircraft computer systems at MIT. See, it all fits.”

“What else can you tell us?”

“The last I heard, they were living at Seth’s place in Hyattsville, Maryland. I’ll give you the address.”

Denver, Colorado

Veyda was behind the wheel of their rented Ford Escape.

Seth consulted the dash-mounted GPS while studying the storefronts as they rolled along Colfax Avenue.

They drove through menacing sections of the city with vacant lots bordered with wire fencing, abandoned buildings laced with graffiti and fortresslike liquor stores. But those areas eventually gave way to cafés, renovated businesses and new townhomes where Colfax Avenue had cleaned up.

They were taking the next critical step in their plan-a quick meeting and transaction with a man named Nash.

Before they’d boarded their flight to Colorado in Washington, Seth had hustled to work out the details for what they needed.

We did a lot of volunteer outreach at school, like computer seminars in federal and state prisons, Seth had told Veyda, while sending off messages in preboarding. The aim was to help them stay abreast technologically for when they were released. I kept in touch with a few guys, because you never know when you might need their expertise. Here, I just got a response. A friend has arranged for a contact in Denver to help us get what we need. His name is Nash. Details to follow. We’re good, babe.

But now that they were here, they hadn’t heard a word from Nash. And driving up and down the same blocks of Colfax was making Veyda uneasy.

Seth had done some exceptional work sending the Zarathustra emails through her father’s computer, making his address in Clear River, North Dakota, appear to be the source point for Zarathustra. But with each passing minute, the video her father had put out was getting more hits and tweets. It lacked details, but sooner or later the police were going to be alerted to it. And that story Kate Page had written asking for people to contact the FBI could be problematic.

Veyda glanced at the time and bit her bottom lip while assessing the facts in their favor. They were so far along, so advanced in completing their plan, that the chances of anyone getting close enough to stop them in time were nonexistent.

Still, she kept an eye out for patrol cars.

“You’re sure this is the right time and place?”

“Positive,” Seth said. “Nash said to be in this area and he’d text me. There! Down the block on the corner. There he is, the guy in the checkered shirt. Pull over.”

Seth dropped his window and Nash stepped up to it.

He was in his early forties. He wore a lumberjack shirt over a white T-shirt and jeans. He was of medium build, had thin blond hair and a face ravaged by acne. He was holding a paper bag from a fast-food outlet.