The Persona Protocol

Chapter 26 The Edge of the World

The little coastal town of Provideniya was one of the most remote settlements in Russia, located at the country’s easternmost edge on the Bering Strait separating Asia and North America. Despite this isolation, close to two thousand hardy souls lived in the former military port. The town had gained an unlikely new economic lifeline following the fall of the Soviet Union, its relative proximity to the US — and the fact that it was home to one of the very few airports in the vast Chukotka region — turning it into a gateway for Siberian tourism.

The Persona team were not there for pleasure, however. In fact, the view outside suggested that any form of fun would be hard to come by. The worst of the Russian winter had passed, the icy waters now more or less navigable, but snow shrouded the bleak, treeless landscape. Heavy grey clouds warned that more was likely to fall. The even heavier coats of the shivering Russian customs officers who boarded the aircraft, making only a cursory check of its occupants and cargo after taking a ‘gift’ of several hundred dollars, made it clear that conditions were bitterly cold.

Kyle watched the departing officials through a porthole as they hurried back to the grim concrete block of the terminal. ‘Man, I’m glad I don’t have to get off the plane.’

‘You’ll have to go outside to launch the UAV,’ Tony reminded him, to the younger man’s dismay.

Bianca was still shocked by the openness with which the Russians had demanded — and received — a bribe. ‘I can’t believe they just shook you down like that.’

‘Standard practice over here,’ he replied. ‘It must be annoying if you’re a tourist, but it makes things a hell of a lot easier if you’re a spy!’ He addressed the others. ‘Okay, let’s set up the op centre.’

The cabin became a whirl of activity as equipment was removed from hidden compartments. Tony, Holly Jo and Kyle assembled their workstations. Baxter and his men meanwhile extracted more deadly hardware: weapons, an assortment of guns from pistols through angular G36 assault rifles painted in mottled grey Arctic camouflage to a hulking Barrett XM500 sniper rifle that looked to Bianca like a refugee from a science fiction movie.

She had equipment of her own, retrieving the medical case while Adam brought out the PERSONA gear. ‘So, what happens now?’ she asked.

‘First we find out where Zykov is,’ Tony told her as he brought his laptop online and checked the latest intelligence updates. ‘Okay,’ he announced, ‘he’s still in flight. ETA, ninety minutes.’

‘What about al-Rais?’ said Baxter.

Holly Jo also had her system up and running. ‘Nobody’s landed here except us. There aren’t any other planes at the airport either, so it doesn’t look as if he’s got anything standing by to take the RTG out.’

‘Perhaps he’s not coming,’ suggested Bianca.

Tony shook his head. ‘The most recent intercepts said Zykov was going to meet him when he arrived.’

‘Maybe al-Rais isn’t coming in by air,’ said Adam quietly as he looked through a window. The airport was on the eastern side of a fjord; across the mile of wind-whipped water was Provideniya itself, apartment blocks painted in shades of blue and yellow and pink standing out against the barren hillside beyond. But his attention was on the waterfront. Several ships were moored at the run-down docks. Most had been laid up there for the winter, blanketed in snow and ice, but a couple stood out as having been in recent use. ‘This is a port, after all.’

‘It’s a hell of a long way to come by sea,’ Baxter said, dubious.

‘He wouldn’t have to come all the way from Pakistan on a ship. We know that he’s managed to travel by air before, despite all the security checks. If he got to Malaysia or the Philippines, a ship could reach here in two weeks.’

‘Still a long time.’

‘The man once spent six months in a cave. A couple of weeks on a ship wouldn’t be much of a hardship for him. Especially not if he thinks he can get his hands on a terror weapon at the end of it.’

Tony joined him, looking out at the town. ‘If he’s planning to move the RTG by sea, that makes things a lot easier for us. With our satellites tracking it, the navy can intercept it anywhere.’

‘I doubt he’d do that, though,’ said Adam. ‘If he’s come in by sea, it’s because he wanted to keep it quiet — but as soon as he gets the RTG, he’ll want to get out of here with it as quickly as possible.’

Tony gave him an admiring look, like a teacher proud of a student’s work. ‘Good thinking. Okay, Holly Jo — new task.’

‘Shipping?’ she said.

‘Yeah. See what we can get on ships coming into the port over the past few days. Kyle, get the UAV in the air and check the docks.’

‘Oh man,’ Kyle complained. ‘You mean I have to go out in the cold?’

‘It builds character,’ Holly Jo told him. ‘Which you need.’

Kyle made a face, then carried the UAV to the front of the cabin. The drone had been partially disassembled for transport. Bianca watched with interest as he attached the shrouded rotors to the main fuselage; this was her first good look at the machine. The entire underside of the body, except for a blister housing the camera lenses, was a smooth carapace inset with a hexagonal pattern. ‘So how does it work?’ she asked. ‘I mean, it’s not huge, but it’s not invisible either. Won’t people see it in the daytime?’

‘Nope,’ said Kyle smugly. ‘It might not be invisible, but it’s the next best thing. See these?’ He tapped one of the hexagons. ‘TCCs.’

‘And those are…?’

‘Tri-polymer chromatic cells! Light-emitting plastic. There’s a little camera aboard that looks up at the sky, and these change colour to match it. So if the sky’s blue, the drone turns blue as well. It’s like the Predator’s cloaking device, brah! It’s awesome.’

‘He’s actually not exaggerating, for once,’ said Holly Jo. ‘It’s really cool.’

Kyle beamed with enthusiasm. ‘Show her, show her.’

Holly Jo leaned over to his workstation and tapped the keyboard. After a moment, the UAV’s shrouded belly turned from a neutral grey to a much lighter beige — matching, Bianca realised, the colour of the bulkhead behind Kyle. ‘That is quite neat,’ she said.

‘Check this out.’ He moved one hand over the little aircraft’s dorsal surface. A second later, the hexagonal cells changed colour again — to a tanned pink. ‘Give it a few years, you’ll be able to put these on your car. Bored with red? Push a button and it turns blue, or green, or anything you want. I can’t wait.’

‘You’ll have to, unless you want to pay a million dollars per square foot,’ said Tony. ‘Okay, switch it off. Save the batteries.’ Holly Jo entered another command and the UAV flicked back to a dull grey.

‘You know what else it needs, though?’ said Kyle. ‘A gun! Seriously, Tony, suggest it. Next time we see someone chasing Adam, pa-pa-pow, boom! Death from above!’

‘You do know that flying a helicopter in Grand Theft Auto isn’t a tactical simulation, right?’ scoffed Holly Jo.

He gave her another sarcastic look, then continued to assemble the UAV. ‘Okay,’ said Tony when he was done, ‘send it out.’

‘Don’t I get a coat?’ Kyle moaned as Adam opened the hatch on the side of the aircraft facing away from the terminal building. A biting wind blew into the cabin. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ Kyle yelped as he ducked out on to the steps. He held up the little quadrotor, thumbing a switch. The translucent propellers blurred almost to nothing as the machine’s underbelly changed colour to match the iron clouds overhead.

Kyle hesitantly eased his hold, leaving the UAV hovering in mid-air. Satisfied, he rushed back into the cabin. ‘Okay, okay, close it!’ he gasped as he scurried back to his workstation. ‘God damn, it’s cold out there! No wonder Russians drink so much vodka — they need it to stay warm.’ As Adam shut the hatch, he took the controls. ‘Okay, let’s go have a look at some boats…’

The UAV tipped forward and glided away from the plane, gaining height. The camouflage really did work, Bianca saw; while it wasn’t a perfect match for the surroundings, it was effective enough to confuse the eye. At cruising height, the drone would be almost impossible to spot from the ground.

‘Okay, Adam, Bianca,’ Tony said, ‘I think you should imprint the persona now.’

‘So soon?’ said Adam. ‘Zykov isn’t even here yet.’

‘I know, but I want everyone to be ready the moment he touches down. We don’t know where the RTG is being kept — for all we know, it’s right here at the airport. We can’t afford to lose any time.’

‘Okay,’ said Bianca, opening the cases. ‘Let’s meet Dr Eugene Browning.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Eugene Browning. Middle name, Marcus.’

‘Your date of birth.’

‘That would be November fifth, 1955.’

‘Your place of birth.’

‘Riverside, California.’

‘Your mother’s name.’

‘My mother’s name was Florence.’

‘Her birthday?’

‘July tenth. I think. I was only seven years old when she died. Viral pneumonia. Very sad.’

‘And your most guilty secret?’

Adam’s eyes flicked evasively before he answered. ‘That would be taking a ten-thousand-dollar bribe to overlook some safety infringements at a nuclear plant, when I was an inspector for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nothing major!’ he quickly qualified. There was a hoarseness to his voice, further increasing the oddness of his staccato speech pattern. ‘They were fixed within a week. The plant owner just didn’t want to risk a shutdown. And it was back in 1985!’

‘I think the statute of limitations applies in this case,’ said Tony. Bianca continued with the rest of the standard test questions. All the answers were as expected. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. Fine.’ Adam stood, looking around the cabin as if he hadn’t seen it before. ‘Very plush. It beats flying commercial.’

Tony and Bianca exchanged glances. Browning was more eccentric than any persona Adam had previously used. ‘So long as he knows his stuff…’ Tony muttered.

‘Oh, I do, young man, I do,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve worked with these generators before. I’ll be able to assess this one for you. We just have to find it.’

‘I’ve got something,’ Holly Jo announced. ‘I tracked down the ships in the harbour through the Lloyd’s Register. The Anadyr Star is Russian, and it doesn’t seem to have been to any non-Russian port in the past five years; it’s just a local transport. The Woden, though… Panamanian registry, departed Lingayen in the Philippines thirteen days ago. It got here last night.’

‘So it could have brought al-Rais,’ mused Tony. ‘Kyle, give us a closer look at the Woden.’

The drone’s cameras had provided the names of the two ships lacking a deep coating of ice. Kyle brought the miniature aircraft about to focus on the larger of the pair, an elderly thousand-ton freighter. The UAV was a few hundred feet above the bay, giving the observers an oblique view of the ship. Lights were visible in its portholes, but there was no activity on the decks. ‘Whoever’s aboard, they’re not coming out,’ he said. ‘When it’s this nut-freezingly cold, I can’t blame ’em.’

‘Someone might come out soon,’ Tony replied, checking his laptop. ‘We just got an update on Zykov’s plane. Looks like he made good time; he’ll be landing in ten minutes. We’d better be ready for him. Kyle, get the drone back over here so we can see what he does.’

‘On it,’ Kyle responded.

Baxter and his men finished preparing their weapons. Bianca sat with Adam, unable to shake off a growing nervousness. Before long, Holly Jo provided an update. ‘He’s on final approach. Coming in from the south.’

Everyone moved to the right side of the cabin to watch. Lights shone above the sea as the incoming plane made its final descent. It hesitantly lined up with the narrow strip of snow-cleared runway, then dropped down to a bumpy landing. Before long, it had taxied around to the terminal building, stopping directly in front of it some three hundred metres from the Bombardier.

‘There’s Zykov,’ said Kyle as he brought the UAV in closer. The squat Russian was the first out of the business jet, pulling a heavy coat tightly around himself. Two other men emerged behind him. Bianca recognised one as a bodyguard from Macau.

The pilot closed the hatch behind them. ‘I guess al-Rais didn’t fly in with them,’ said Baxter, sounding disappointed.

Two Russian officials came out to meet the trio. After a brief exchange, all five men headed into the building. ‘Tony,’ said the Bombardier’s pilot over the intercom, ‘port side. We’ve got company.’

The rush to the other side of the cabin was enough to make the plane rock slightly. Everyone peered out of the windows. The Global 6000 was parked on a broad expanse of concrete north of the terminal, at the edge of which was a chain-link fence separating the airport from the snowy landscape beyond.

Something was making its way towards them along a track running around the bay’s shore. ‘What the hell’s that?’ said Kyle.

Baxter eyed the approaching vehicle. ‘It’s a Vityaz.’

‘A what?’

‘A Vityaz. DT-10 all-terrain vehicle. The Russians love ’em. Mud, snow, swamp, water — you name it, those things can drive through it.’

Bianca watched the Vityaz as it trundled towards the airport boundary. It was a low, wide slab of snow-caked metal painted a dingy military green, riding on broad caterpillar tracks. As it turned to follow the fence, she saw that it had two separately articulated halves, an equally boxy trailer on its own set of tracks connected to the forward section by a clutch of hefty hydraulic rams. From the way it was effortlessly carving through the snow, it appeared Baxter was right about its off-road capabilities, even if speed had not been high on its designer’s list of priorities.

‘Is al-Rais in it?’ Tony wondered aloud. ‘Kyle, get the drone over there. I want to see who’s inside.’

It took another couple of minutes for the Vityaz to reach the terminal. By that time, the UAV had taken up station to observe it. ‘Damn it, we can’t see anything from this angle,’ muttered Baxter, looking over Kyle’s shoulder. ‘Bring it lower.’

‘If I do that, someone might see it,’ Kyle shot back. ‘I know what I’m doing, brah.’

‘I’m not your braaahhh,’ Baxter said, growling the word.

‘Keep it at the same height,’ Tony ordered. ‘But pull back so we can see into the cabin.’

Kyle complied, zooming in on the Vityaz’s row of four front windows. Reflections made it difficult to see inside, but movement within revealed a shadowy form at the controls. ‘I don’t see anyone else.’

‘Could be someone in the rear cargo bed,’ Baxter suggested. ‘Or the trailer.’

But the only person who got out when the Vityaz stopped was the driver, an overweight, bearded man wearing a large fur hat. He waddled to the terminal entrance and went inside. After a couple of minutes he emerged, now accompanied by Zykov and his two bodyguards. Zykov asked a question; the driver responded by pointing in the direction of the little town across the fjord.

‘Al-Rais is in the town,’ Adam said suddenly. ‘That’s where they’re meeting. We need to get over there.’

‘We can track him with the UAV,’ Tony pointed out.

‘No, no. Something’s not right.’ The agent’s concerns sounded incongruous in Browning’s staccato speech patterns. ‘You said yourself that al-Rais won’t take the RTG away by sea. Too vulnerable. And Zykov won’t be flying it out on his own jet. Far too risky. But there aren’t any other planes here. So how’s he getting it out?’ He stabbed a finger at the Vityaz on Kyle’s screen. ‘Mr Baxter just said that thing can go anywhere.’ Another jab, this time through the portholes at the cars parked by the terminal. ‘The road into town’s obviously passable. You don’t need something like that just to be a taxicab. They’re going somewhere else. Somewhere with no roads.’

‘They’ll have to come back to the airport, though,’ said Holly Jo. ‘I mean, this is literally the only way out of here.’

‘No! No it isn’t, young lady, no it isn’t. Sevnik’s an army colonel, he has command of helicopters.’ Zykov and his men clambered aboard the Vityaz. ‘We’ve got to follow them. Tony, how much more bribe money do we have? Roubles and dollars.’

The question surprised Tony. ‘I’m not sure. A few thousand of each?’

‘I’ll need it all.’

‘Why?’

‘We need a car. I’m going to follow them into town.’

‘The UAV can do that.’

‘Tony, trust me. I need to stay close. We can’t afford to lose them.’

‘If anyone’s going after them, it should be my guys,’ said Baxter.

‘I’m sure a team of armed commandos skiing through town will pass completely without comment,’ Adam retorted, to the Alabaman’s annoyance.

‘Okay. Adam, you go,’ Tony decided. ‘But don’t get too close — Zykov knows you. And take a gun.’

Adam nodded. ‘Bianca, come on.’

‘What?’ she yelped. ‘I’m not going out there!’

‘We might need the PERSONA. If we have a chance to record al-Rais’s memories, we have to take it.’

‘It’s too risky,’ said Tony, shaking his head.

‘He’s setting off,’ Kyle warned. The Vityaz lurched into motion, bending like a metal caterpillar at its central joint and making a tight turn back along the track.

‘Tony,’ said Adam, more forcefully. ‘We’re running out of time. I won’t take any unnecessary risks. Especially not with Bianca there. Zykov knows her too.’

‘Okay, go,’ Tony said, with reluctance. ‘Both of you.’

‘Don’t I get any say in this?’ Bianca protested.

‘Sorry. But Adam’ll take care of you, trust me.’

Adam was already moving down to the cabin to collect his gear. ‘Come on,’ he called over his shoulder to Bianca. ‘And wrap up warm.’