John Hawks - The Dark River

“Can we go?”

“Thank you,” Hollis said. “And be careful.”

Tristan had regained some of his confidence. He bowed from the waist, and Kröte gave Hollis a big smile. “Good luck from the Spandau Free Runners!”

HOLLIS DRAGGED THE equipment bag down the pipe with Mother Blessing a few yards behind him. When they were both standing in the maintenance corridor, the Harlequin pressed her mouth against his ear. “Speak softly,” she whispered. “They could have voice sensors.”

They moved cautiously down the corridor to a heavy steel door with a slot for a key card. Mother Blessing placed the equipment bag on the floor and unzipped it. She took out the submachine gun and something that looked like a credit card fastened to a thin electric cable. The Harlequin attached the cable to her laptop computer, typed a command on the keyboard, and inserted the card in the door slot.

They both watched the computer screen as six blue squares appeared on the screen. It took about a minute to place a three-digit number in the first square, but then the process went faster. About four minutes later, all six squares were filled and the lock clicked open.

“Do we go in?” Hollis whispered.

“Not yet. We can’t avoid surveillance cameras, so we’ll have to use a shielder.” She picked up something that looked like a small video camera. “Carry this on your shoulder. When I open the door, press the silver button.”

As Mother Blessing repacked the equipment bag, Hollis placed the shielder device on his right shoulder and aimed it forward.

“Ready?”

Holding the submachine gun, Mother Blessing eased the door open. Hollis stepped into the doorway, saw a surveillance camera, and pressed the button of the shielder as if he were taking a video. An infrared beam was projected down the corridor. The beam struck the retroreflective lens of a surveillance camera and the infrared light was bounced back to the source. Once the position of the camera was determined, a green laser beam was automatically aimed at the camera lens.

“Don’t stand here,” Mother Blessing said. “Start moving.”

“What about the surveillance camera?”

“The laser takes care of that. If a security guard is watching his monitor, all he’ll see is a flash of light on the screen.”

They hurried down the corridor and turned the corner. Once again, the shielder detected a new camera and a laser beam hit the center of the lens. A second door was at the end of the corridor, which led to an emergency staircase. They followed the staircase upward to the landing and paused again.

“You ready?” Mother Blessing asked.

Hollis nodded. “Keep going.”

“I spent too many months sitting around on that wretched island,” Mother Blessing said. “This is much more entertaining.”

She pushed open the door and they entered a basement room filled with machines and communications equipment. A white walkway on the floor led to a reception desk where a security guard was eating a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“Stay here,” Mother Blessing said to Hollis. She handed him the submachine gun, stepped out of the shadows, and walked briskly toward the reception area. “Don’t worry! Everything is going to be all right! Did you get the phone call?”

Still holding the sandwich, the guard shook his head. “What phone call?”

The Irish Harlequin drew the automatic from beneath her jacket and fired. The bullet hit the guard in the middle of his chest and knocked him out of his chair. Mother Blessing didn’t break her stride. She slipped the handgun back in the holster, stepped around the desk, and approached a steel door.

Hollis caught up with the Harlequin. “There’s no door handle.”

“It’s electronically activated.” Mother Blessing scrutinized a small steel box attached to the wall near the door. “This is a palm vein scanner that uses infrared light. Even if we had known about this, it would be difficult to create a bio dupe. Most veins aren’t visible beneath the skin.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“When you’re trying to overcome security barriers, the choices are either low-tech or very high-tech.”

Mother Blessing took the submachine gun from Hollis, removed a spare ammunition clip from the equipment bag, and slid the clip between her belt and waistband. The Harlequin pointed her weapon at the door and motioned Hollis to step aside. “Get ready. We’re going low.”

She fired the submachine gun. Pieces of metal and wood spun through the air as bullets cut a jagged hole through the left edge of the door. As Mother Blessing snapped the spare clip into her weapon, Hollis shoved his hand through the hole and pulled hard. Metal scraped against metal and the door lurched open.

He rushed into the room and found himself staring at a glass tower at least three stories high. Layers of piled-up computer hardware were inside the tower, and their blinking lights were reflected on the glass like miniature fireworks. The whole structure looked both beautiful and mysterious-as if an alien spaceship had suddenly materialized inside the building.

A large monitor hung on the wall about twenty feet away from the tower. It showed an image of Berlin from some location outside the building, a duplicate world where computer-generated figures strolled through a city square. Two frightened computer technicians stood at a control panel directly below the monitor. They were motionless for a few seconds, and then the younger man hit a button on the panel and darted across the room.

Mother Blessing drew her handgun, paused for a second, and shot the fugitive in the leg. As the technician sprawled across the floor, an emergency light started flashing and the computer-generated voice came from a wall speaker.

“Verlassen Sie das Gebäuder. Veslassen Sie-”

Looking annoyed, Mother Blessing put a bullet in the speaker. “We don’t want to leave the building,” she said. “We’re having such a lovely time.”

The wounded man lay on his side, clutching his leg and screaming. Mother Blessing approached her target and stood over his body. “Stay quiet and be glad you’re alive. I don’t like people who set off alarms.”

The wounded man ignored her. He shouted for a doctor and began to roll back and forth.

“I asked you to stay quiet,” Mother Blessing said. “That’s a simple request.”

She waited a few seconds to see if the wounded man was going to obey her. When he kept shouting, she shot him in the head and walked over to the control panel. The surviving technician was a slender man in his thirties with short black hair and a bony face. He was breathing so quickly that Hollis thought he might faint.

“And what’s your name?” Mother Blessing asked.

“Gunther Lindemann.”

“Good evening, Mr. Lindemann. What we want is access to a USB outlet for a flash drive.”

“Not…not here,” Lindemann said. “But there are three outlets inside the tower.”

“Okay. Let’s take a tour.”

Lindemann led them over to a sliding door on one side of the tower. Hollis could see that the walls of the tower were six inches thick. Each glass panel was held in place by an outer steel frame. Another palm vein scanner was mounted on the wall. Lindemann slid his hand into the box and the door clicked open.

Cold air surrounded them as they entered the sterile environment. Quickly, Hollis walked over to a workstation with a computer, keyboard, and monitor. He removed the gold chain holding the flash drive, then snapped the drive into an access port.

A message scrolled across the monitor screen in four languages: UNKNOWN VIRUS DETECTED. RISK-HIGH. The screen went blank for a moment and then a red square appeared containing ninety little squares. Only one of the boxes was a solid red color, and it flashed on and off as if a single cancer cell had appeared in a healthy body.