Wired

PART FOUR Reunion

Kira Miller took the lead as they hiked through the woods. Desh was close behind, his .45 trained on her back, while Connelly and Griffin brought up the rear; all four staying alert for possible ambushes. Their destination was Kira’s SUV, rented under an assumed name, which was parked at a campground a half-mile distant and which could not be immediately traced. They were in an untouched section of the woods, blazing their own trail, and their progress was slower than Desh would have liked. Kira had used a small GPS device to find the clearing, and she consulted it periodically to be sure they were taking the most direct line to her vehicle possible.

Desh fumed silently. How had he let Smith slip through his fingers! Smith had known they couldn’t wait until he regained consciousness to interrogate him, and dragging his unconscious body along as they made their escape would be equally foolhardy. As expected, the man had carried no identification. Shit, thought Desh for the third time. He had been so close to finally learning what was going on and who was pulling Smith’s strings. It was maddening!

Desh had tranquilized the remaining commandoes to ensure they couldn’t sound an alarm. After he had cut Griffin and Connelly free, he had taken the standard, military first-aid kit from the helicopter and had cleaned and dressed the colonel’s wound, giving him a potent pain killer as well. Before they had taken off into the woods, Desh also hurriedly dressed the wound of the now-unconscious soldier Connelly had shot.

All in all, Connelly had been lucky, but he had still lost a considerable amount of blood and the risk of infection was significant. He needed to get to a doctor soon.

Kira stopped walking and gestured toward Desh’s gun. “Do you really need to point that at me?” she whispered, taking care that her voice wouldn’t carry and advertise their presence.

It was a good question, thought Desh. Did he? She had warned him about Smith; warned him that Connelly was in danger. And she had been right. She had also just bailed them out of a big mess.

But what if this had been nothing but a set-up? For all Desh knew she and Smith were working together. Still, to what end? If she wanted Desh dead she could have accomplished this at the motel. If she was allied with Smith to acquire Griffin and Connelly along with him, they were seconds away from this as well. What’s more, she had voluntarily put herself under Desh’s control.

Desh wasn’t about to holster his gun until they were in more secure territory, but he joined Kira at the front of the procession and no longer pointed it in her direction.

“Thanks,” she whispered earnestly.

“So you bugged the sweatshirt, too, didn’t you?” asked Desh in hushed tones as they began to move again, barely managing to keep any trace of admiration from his voice.

Kira nodded guiltily.

“What are you doing here?”

“I knew they’d follow the colonel to your meeting place and try to kill him. I decided I couldn’t let that happen.”

Desh studied her carefully but detected no sign of deceit. “Do you really have a suicide tooth?” he whispered.

A broad smile came over her face. “No,” she admitted. “It was all I could think of at the time.” She raised her eyebrows. “Actually, I figured my bluster wouldn’t keep Smith from deciding I was bluffing for very long. I was counting on you to get the hint and jump in—which is exactly what you did.”

Desh knew that he should have done so immediately, but he had been too busy admiring her performance. “How did you know I was watching?” he asked.

“I heard Smith threaten your friends and give you three minutes to return and surrender. I knew you wouldn’t let them die,” she whispered approvingly. “And I knew if you heard my voice you’d stay hidden to see what was going on.”

Desh nodded but didn’t respond. In addition to being scientifically brilliant, she could think on her feet as well as anyone he had ever known—and this was saying quite a lot.

Before long they entered a large clearing with a sign that read, “Campground 3B”. Eight small wood cabins were arranged in a semicircle within the clearing, and cars were parked beside several of them. A gravel road led away from the campground on the opposite side.

Kira had parked the SUV at the edge of the campground, and soon they were all inside, with Kira driving, Desh in the passenger seat, and Connelly and Griffin in the back.

As Kira started the engine, Desh turned to her and said, “I assume you came here from the road that parallels the one we took. Can you get us back there?”

“Absolutely.” She pulled onto the gravel road and slowly moved forward. Connelly winced as the SUV vibrated on the unpaved surface and jostled his injury.

“Where to once we hit the main artery?” she asked.

Desh pursed his lips in concentration. “That depends. Any guess as to when they’ll link this car to us?”

“Hard to say,” she replied. “It depends on when they discover their raid back there failed, and how many cars are on the road. It shouldn’t be immediate, though.”

Desh’s eyes narrowed as he sorted through various possibilities. “There’s a large shopping center between Petersburg and Richmond called the Manor Hill Mall—it’s all-enclosed, making it inaccessible to satellite surveillance. We could lose ourselves in the crowds and then leave. They may be able to track us to there, but they’ll have a hell of a time tracking us from there.”

Kira looked impressed. “I like it,” she said.

“Colonel?” said Desh.

“Me to,” said Connelly. “I recommend we split up once we’re there.”

“Agreed,” said Desh. He turned to Kira. “If you can get us on I-95 north, the mall is just off a main exit.”

She nodded. “Will do.”

The wide gravel road soon ended in a skinny paved one that wound its way through the heart of the woods for a half mile before hitting an arrow-straight main artery. Kira pulled onto the main road and accelerated as rapidly as the rental would allow.

Desh turned in his seat to face Connelly. “Colonel, how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” said Connelly stoically, but blood was still slowly seeping through his bandages and he looked pale.

“Matt?” said Desh. “How about you? Are you okay?”

“Not really,” he said. “But it’s hard to complain when I’m sitting next to someone with a bullet wound who isn’t,” he said dryly.

Desh was encouraged that Griffin had recovered his sense of humor. “When we get to the mall, we’ll split up into two groups,” said Desh. “I’ll go with Kira. Matt, can I count on you to look after the colonel?”

“Look after him?”

Desh nodded. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not doing as well as he’s pretending.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his thick stack of hundreds; passing about forty of them to Griffin in the back seat. “A little spending money,” he said. “I need you to see to it that he gets to a doctor.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Griffin solemnly.

“Colonel, any good military doctors you trust with your life?” asked Desh.

Connelly considered. “Yes. Don Menken. He’s retired but still lives near Bragg. I can trust him to patch me up and not ask any questions.”

Kira opened the SUV’s center console and pulled out a cell phone. She passed it back to Griffin. “Use this phone to reach us,” she instructed. “I have its mate. Hit Autodial 1 and it will speed-dial my number. The phone is completely secure.”

“No cell phone is secure,” said Connelly wearily, the vitality of his voice beginning to wane as his blood loss began to catch up with him.

“The signal can be intercepted easily enough, but the phone can’t be connected to me. Even if it could, the audio is sent scrambled. These two phones can unscramble each other’s signals, but even top cryptographic experts won’t be able to decipher the conversation.”

Connelly doubted her code was nearly as tight as she thought it was, but he didn’t argue the point.

“Let’s come up with a game plan we can use when we get to the mall,” suggested Desh.

“Agreed,” rasped Connelly. “But first give me the shorthand version of why we’re joining forces with enemy number one here.”

Kira glanced at Desh with interest, as though curious as to what he would say.

Desh sighed. Connelly was the least well informed of any of them. “We both know there’s far more going on here than we understand,” he began. “Smith’s men crashed the party at the motel. And Smith had a cell phone that responded to the number you gave me and told me you were taking orders from him. But we know that was a lie. Kira claims she’s innocent and not involved in any terror plots. She warned me that you were in danger from Smith, and she was right.” He raised his eyebrows. “And she did risk herself to rescue us,” he added pointedly.

“You’ve seen her file,” responded Connelly. “She’s a brilliant manipulator and liar. This could all have been staged.”

“This is true. And believe me, I haven’t lost sight of that. But she claims she can prove her innocence and explain what’s going on, and I’m going to give her that chance. I can assure you that I’ll bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the table.”

Desh looked at his watch and calculated how long it would take them to reach their destination. “We need to be sure we know what we’ll be doing at the mall and think it through so we don’t make any obvious mistakes,” he said. “But that shouldn’t take long. With the time remaining I’ll try to give you a 30,000-foot view of what I know. Matt can fill in more of the details when he has the chance.”

“Fair enough,” said Connelly.

“Before I begin, I need to warn you: without the details you’re going to find most of this hard to believe.”

Matt Griffin smiled slyly and rolled his eyes. “You can say that again,” he muttered from the back of the SUV.

The Manor Hill Mall was a hive of activity. Between them, Petersburg and Richmond had a population of over a million people, and it wasn’t hard to believe that half of them were shopping at Manor Hill. The mall was four stories high, with all four stories under a vaulted atrium ceiling, and encompassed a total square footage of retail space that was hard to comprehend. Connelly had donned Desh’s windbreaker to hide his blood soaked bandages. Desh and Kira had dropped Griffin and the colonel at one end of the mall before driving almost half a mile to enter the mall at its opposite end.

As they had planned during the drive, Griffin and Connelly entered a crowded clothing store and made themselves over from head to toe in an ensemble chosen to help them blend in. They then bought scissors and shaving gear and emerged from a restroom ten minutes later without any facial hair. When Griffin had been told this would be necessary he had almost mutinied; but in the end he had agreed that this was a better alternative than being discovered and shot to death—barely. Connelly was also pained to part with his prized mustache, but he took the loss with military stoicism.

After altering their appearance, the two men ordered a cab under an assumed name and took it to a side entrance of a nearby Hilton hotel. They then passed through the lobby to the front of the hotel and convinced another cabbie to take them all the way to Connelly’s doctor friend. The cabbie had adamantly refused to drive this far until he was handed a stack of hundred dollar bills, after which he decided that the customer was always king, and he’d be happy to take them where they wanted to go.

Desh and Kira changed outfits as well. Desh was now wearing a pair of pre-faded jeans and a hooded, burgundy-and-gold Washington Redskins sweatshirt with oversized pockets. Kira replaced the tan jacket she had been wearing with a blue one of a different style, and her hair was now tucked up inside a Redskins ball cap. Both wore tennis shoes for comfort and mobility.

Whoever tracked them to the mall would expect their stay to be brief, just long enough so they could lose themselves among the crowd before racing off by cab or stolen car. The last thing anyone would expect them to do would be to loiter at the mall for several hours in plain sight, which is exactly why they planned to do so, leaving on a bus that wasn’t scheduled to depart for several hours yet.

Manor Hill had fourteen restaurants and a Food Court. They found an information booth and asked for a restaurant with a romantic ambiance; shorthand for one that was so poorly lighted they couldn’t be easily seen while inside. At the same time such lighting would allow them to readily see anyone entering the restaurant from the mall.

Twenty minutes later they were in a booth in the back of Montag’s Gourmet Pizza, a restaurant whose dusk-like level of lighting was unexpected in a pizza place, gourmet or otherwise, but was perfect for their needs.

The waiter noticed their matching Redskins attire from a distance and assumed they were on a date, but as he got a closer look at the grime and dense shadow of stubble on Desh’s face, he changed his mind. They must be married, he thought. No one on a date would have such little regard for personal hygiene.

Desh ordered a soda, Kira iced-tea, and they ordered a large pizza to split. Although Desh knew he had far more important things to worry about, sharing a pizza seemed too much like breaking bread with the devil for his taste; albeit a devil who had probably saved Connelly’s life. He remained determined to keep as much emotional distance from the woman across from him as he could manage.

When the waiter left, Desh stealthily drew his gun and hid it on his lap, under his oversized sweatshirt, with his finger on the trigger. He situated himself at an awkward angle in the booth so he could watch both Kira and the entrance to the restaurant as they spoke.

After the waiter returned with their drinks and then left again, Kira got right to the point. “I assume you remember where we were last night before we were, ah … interrupted?” Desh nodded. It was hard to believe their discussion had taken place just the night before. “You can make yourself smarter, but when you do you turn into a psychopath.” As he spoke he continued to anxiously watch the entrance, scrutinizing anyone who approached the hostess podium and scanning all human mall traffic in his view.

“Who knew you had such a way with words,” said Kira. She smiled warmly. “That may be the most succinct summation in history.”

“We can’t be sure when we’ll be interrupted again,” said Desh icily, subconsciously trying to counter her warmth. “Since you’re so eager to convince me you’re not working with terrorists, let’s not waste any time.”

“Agreed,” said Kira soberly. She quickly gathered her thoughts. “I left off about two-and-a-half years after I joined NeuroCure,” she said. “When I had achieved my breakthrough. Do you have any questions about the treatment before I move on?”

Desh thought about this as he watched a group of teenaged girls stroll by the restaurant, wearing clothing that was several years too old for them along with a colorful assortment of flashy costume jewelry. “How long does the transformation last?” he asked.

“Only about an hour. I was afraid to make it last any longer. Not without better understanding the treatment and what it was doing to me.”

“Including your newfound admiration for the work of Nietzsche?”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised the effect is so short.”

“It seems longer when you’re experiencing it. And at this level of intelligence, the number of insights you can have in a single hour is staggering. To make the effect permanent, I would need to make other modifications to the body. Even in an hour your body becomes depleted of the molecular precursors for neurotransmitters and you get a craving for glucose like you wouldn’t believe. After a transformation, I wouldn’t feel completely normal for days. I decided not to try it more than once a week, at most.”

Desh wondered if anything Smith had told him in the car was true. Since Kira had listened in to this entire conversation there was no reason to be coy. “So where did you decide to focus this towering IQ of yours?” he asked. “Smith said you were working on extending human life and eventually conquering mortality itself.”

“He was right,” she said. “I’ll go into that in more detail later, but this was one of three major goals I set for myself.”

Desh considered pressing her to talk more about longevity, but decided to be patient and let her continue in her own way. “What were the other two?”

“One was to achieve another jump in intelligence. In my transformed state it was clear that a level substantially higher than what I had achieved was possible.” She took a sip of her iced-tea and set it back down. “My last goal was to um—” She paused and looked slightly embarrassed. “Accumulate massive wealth.”

“And here I was beginning to think you were Mother Teresa.”

Kira nodded. “I had a feeling that would be your reaction,” she said. “In my defense, I didn’t want the money for luxuries. I just wanted to be sure that money would never be an issue if I needed equipment or supplies for my other projects, wherever my enhanced intelligence would lead me.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that immortals would need to have a pretty big nest egg,” he allowed. He fished a breadstick from a small wicker basket on the table filled with an assortment of rolls. “Becoming wealthy is the one goal I’m fairly certain you achieved. That is, if I can be certain of anything these days,” he added in frustration. “But I’m eager to learn just how it is you were able to accomplish this so quickly,” he finished accusingly.

“You think I sold my soul to terrorists?”

“Why not? Even if you aren’t sociopathic normally, you admit you are in your enhanced state. Why let a little thing like the deaths of millions slow you down?”

“Come on, David,” she snapped in annoyance. “Think it through. Even if I acted on my sociopathic tendencies—which I didn’t—I would only be a raving sociopath, not stupid. I had achieved immeasurable intelligence. Creativity that would put Thomas Edison to shame. An intellect that would make Stephen Hawking look slow. With capabilities like these, do you really think I’m going to spend years working on a bioterror agent to sell to people who would happily kill me for not covering my face?” She shook her head in exasperation. “I could make millions just selling the cryptographic software that I thought up in ten minutes, or any number of other inventions that could be marketed immediately. What do you think the government would pay for a material that completely shields heat signatures?”

Desh frowned. “When you put it that way, working with terrorists does sound pretty stupid.”

“Thank you,” she said emphatically. She paused as the waiter came over to check on them.

“Not that it matters,” she continued as soon as the waiter was out of earshot, “but I made my fortune in the stock market.”

Desh raised his eyebrows. “That wouldn’t have been my first guess. How?”

“I analyzed the market while at an elevated level of intelligence,” she replied. “When you’re in the transformed state you have absolute access to your memory. All of your memory. The human brain stores every single input it ever receives: everything you think, read, see, touch or experience. In our normal, un-optimized mode, we’re unable to access all but the tiniest tip of that iceberg. But in my enhanced state I can make correlations and logical connections between bits of information I didn’t even know I had. Treacherously complex patterns become obvious. Market insights quickly present themselves.”

“Did you understand your analysis when you returned to normal?”

Kira smiled. “Not even a little,” she admitted. “All I know is that I was right about eighty percent of the time, more than enough to make me very rich, very fast. I underwent my treatment four different times with the sole purpose of analyzing the stock market. And I only placed the riskiest of bets. Currency fluctuations, options, futures—that sort of thing. Over a three-month period I increased my wealth a thousand-fold. The stock market is legalized gambling and I had transformed myself into the ultimate Rain Man.”

As usual, she made the most fantastic claims seem eminently plausible. “So why the false identities and Swiss bank accounts?”

“I started to get paranoid, so I began taking precautions.”

“Is paranoia another side effect of the enhanced intelligence?”

“No,” she replied solemnly. “It’s a side effect of getting robbed.”

Desh’s eyes narrowed. “Is this where the arch nemesis you wrote about in your E-mail comes in? Your Moriarty?”

“I like that,” said Kira, smiling. “Gives me hope that you aren’t still convinced that I’m Moriarty. If you had said, ‘Your arch nemesis, Sherlock Holmes,’ I’d really be depressed right now.”

Desh couldn’t help but return her smile.

“One of the things that popped out when I was studying you was how wonderfully well read you are,” said Kira earnestly.

“Moriarty isn’t exactly an obscure reference. The majority of ten-year-olds know who he is.”

She smiled and her eyes sparkled playfully. “That doesn’t make what I said any less true. Besides, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I’m not convinced the majority of adults even know the name of our Speaker of the House.”

A slight smile played across Desh’s face. “So tell me about the robbery?”

Desh tensed as a fit man in this thirties with a serious look on his face approached the hostess station and began scanning the restaurant carefully, his eyes moving in an arc that would soon include their booth. “Duck!” whispered Desh as he slipped the gun out from under his sweatshirt and braced himself for action. Kira slid down in the booth as if she had dropped a coin on the floor.

Seconds later the man’s eyes stopped shifting as his gaze settled on a booth two over from where they were seated. An attractive woman who was seated with two preschool children waved at him happily. He raised his hand in acknowledgment, his face becoming relaxed, and he hurriedly joined his family.

Desh let out the breath he had been holding. “False alarm,” he whispered. “Sorry.”

Kira returned to a fully upright position. “Don’t be,” she said, shaking her head. “Better to err on the side of caution. Besides, I’m sure my pulse will return to normal in an hour or so,” she added with a grin.

“You were going to tell me about the robbery,” prompted Desh.

“Right,” said Kira. “I came home from work one night and my place had been broken into. I had a bottle with twenty-three gellcaps and my lab notebook stored in the false bottom of a dresser drawer. Both were missing.”

“You had a dresser with a false-bottomed drawer?”

“I thought putting valuables in a safe would be too obvious. I measured the drawer and had someone at a hardware store cut a platform to my exact specifications. I wallpapered it to match the bottoms of the other drawers and stacked some sweaters on top.”

Desh raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Did they take anything else?” he asked, chewing absently on the breadstick he had taken and continuing to watch the entrance.

“Nothing. They knew exactly what they were after.”

“Any ideas who it was?”

“Not when it happened, no. I was stunned. I had been careful not to leave a trail. I routinely disposed of the rodents I was using and I never let my lab notebook out of my sight. Until then, I wouldn’t have believed it possible that anyone could have known what I was doing. On a hunch, the next day I hired someone at an executive protection agency, like yours, to look for listening devices.” She frowned deeply. “He found several in both my office and home. That’s the day I truly began to get paranoid.”

“That would do it,” muttered Desh.

“It was a disaster. Whoever he was, having twenty-three doses of my therapy instantly made him the most formidable man on the planet. I began to take elaborate precautions, learned everything I could about bugs and how to find them, and took some pains to spread my fortune across various accounts. The next time I was enhanced it became clear to me I needed to create a number of flawless false identities as well as invent technologies that would help me stay hidden if I was forced to disappear.”

“Enhanced intuition also?”

She nodded. “Intuition is just your subconscious putting together subtle clues and coming to a conclusion that your conscious mind hasn’t quite reached. Since my rewiring gives me access to all the memories buried in my subconscious, it unleashes the full power of intuition.” Kira paused. “As later events were to prove, this intuition was right on target.”

Desh said nothing as he finished the breadstick and drained the last of his soda. There was certainly no arguing this point.

“Three days later,” continued Kira, “my boss, Tom Morgan, was killed in a car accident.”

Desh nodded, almost imperceptibly. Interesting, he thought. Another piece of the puzzle that was now—possibly—explained.

“I was never able to find any evidence, but I suspect Morgan stumbled onto what I was doing and was responsible for having the bugs planted. My guess is he later approached someone powerful to sell what he knew and access to some of the gellcaps. My unknown enemy. Moriarty, as you called him.”

Desh frowned. “And Moriarty had Morgan killed so he would have an exclusive on your treatment.”

“That’s my guess.”

Desh opened his mouth to ask another question but closed it again as the waiter approached with their pizza. As he carefully placed it on the table in front of them, Desh reflected on everything Kira had told him. Her chronology of events explained any number of loose ends. And the central premise of his assignment, that she was working with terrorists on a bioterror plot, had become laughably implausible. And she had warned them about Smith and had risked herself to extricate them.

And although he tried to resist, her looks and personality continued to cast a spell on him. As much as he needed to affix his gaze solely on the entrance and stay alert at all times, he found his eyes inexorably returning to hers as they spoke. He needed to keep the Greek myth of the Siren sea nymphs firmly in his mind. Was he really being as objective in considering her arguments as he needed to be? Were there holes that he was failing to consider?

However much she explained away, he kept returning to the same place: the deaths surrounding her childhood were indisputable. Griffin had verified as much when Desh had been asleep on the hacker’s couch. And the evidence against her in the killing of Lusetti and her brother was airtight. As appealing as he found her and as artful as her explanations had been, it was still more likely than not that most of what she said was an elaborate fabrication.

They both hungrily ate their first piece of pizza in silence, after which Desh announced his plan to use the restroom and scout the mall once again. He spent a few minutes in the restroom scrubbing his face with soap and cold water, feeling reinvigorated as he did so, and then exited the restaurant.

Throngs of brightly colored shoppers of every description paraded through the mall in all directions, creating a random, ever-changing mosaic of humanity. Some race-walked as if on an urgent mission while others strolled leisurely. Some were empty handed while others carried soft-pretzels, ice cream, elaborate purses, or plastic shopping bags filled to the brim with recent purchases. A young girl pointed excitedly to a pair of shoes though a window as her mother looked on with an amused expression on her face. Desh envied them their untroubled innocence.

He pretended to look in a few store windows and wander through the mall for the next five minutes, furtively scanning the crowd as he did so, but detected nothing out of place and no sign of pursuit.

He returned to the booth to find that Kira was almost finished with her last piece of pizza and the waiter had refilled his drink. Kira eyed him warily as he sat down. “Any suspicious activity?”

Desh shook his head. “I think we’re probably in the clear,” he said. “If they haven’t found us by now, they’ll have moved on. They’ll never believe we’d do something as stupid as making sitting ducks of ourselves—literally—in the middle of a busy restaurant.”

“Stupid like a fox,” said Kira with a twinkle in her eye.

Desh smiled. He lifted a large slice of pizza and gestured to Kira. “By all means, continue,” he said. “You left off when your boss turned up dead.”

Kira gathered herself and resumed her narrative. “After the break-in, Morgan’s death, and discovering the listening devices, I became more secretive than ever. I routinely swept for listening devices and I performed all animal experiments in my condo rather than at NeuroCure’s facilities.” She paused. “I worked on both of my primary goals at the same time, but I achieved the leap forward in neuronal optimization first.”

“How long after the break-in?” he asked.

“About nine months.”

“I assume you tested it to be sure it worked.”

“Yes. I engineered a batch with an exceedingly short half-life in case there were complications. I was only in this state of super-optimization for about two seconds, but it was enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough to be certain I’d succeeded. Those two seconds felt like five minutes. The first level of optimization is beyond description. The second level is beyond imagination.” Her eyes widened in wonder. “It was a transcendent level of thought. Awe-inspiring. So much so that I was afraid to ever try it again.”

This time Desh knew only too well what she meant. Once again, she had been afraid of the corrupting influences of untold power.

“The lower dose was having a cumulative effect,” continued Kira. “The more I transformed myself the greater my tendency to embrace the idea of ruthlessly selfish behavior. My emotional side became ever more suppressed, and my feelings of superiority continued to increase. It’s hard enough retaining the vestiges of altruism when you become convinced there is no afterlife. And when you’re powerful enough to do whatever you want. It’s even worse when you begin to see normal human intelligence as pathetically insignificant.” She looked troubled. “If this was how I began to view humanity when optimized to the first level, how would I view our species if I spent more than two seconds at an even more elevated level?”

Desh continued eating as she spoke but he was quickly losing his appetite. Was there really a plane of intelligence so elevated that normal human intelligence didn’t register? He killed insects without much thought. Beings whose intelligence was as far beyond human intelligence as his was beyond an insect couldn’t be blamed for indifference to human life, or even active slaughter of any human that stood in their way.

God as ruthless sociopath?

Or was God, despite infinite power and intelligence, the one exception to the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” rule? Even assuming everything in the bible was completely true, the answer to this question was not obvious. Religions that would be appalled at a characterization of God as anything but a loving father readily accepted that He had wiped all life from the planet, save for two members from each species, simply because He was annoyed at humanity’s bad behavior.

Desh pulled himself from his brief reverie and considered the woman in front of him, whose large, expressive blue eyes continued to act as black holes, drawing him into their irresistible gravity wells, defying his every effort at resistance. He needed to stay objective. It was time to get at the heart of the matter. “You’re very good,” said Desh. “I’ll give you that. But before you go any further I’d like to back up. I want you to explain the deaths of your parents and uncle. And the murder of one of your teachers and the disappearance of another.”

She frowned and shook her head. “My parents and uncle died in accidents. As far as the teachers go, I have no idea what happened to them. But I had nothing to do with it.”

“So you acknowledge that one disappeared and the other was killed horribly, by an obvious psychopath?”

“How could I not? It’s the truth. I’ll never forget it. It was all anyone could talk about for a long time.” She leaned in intently. “Are you suggesting you have evidence that I committed these crimes?”

“No. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty conclusive.”

“It’s only conclusive because of your bias. There’s no way I can prove I had nothing to do with those deaths. Whether you believe me or not depends on what lens you view them with. If you’re looking for trouble, you’re going to find it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, if you already think I’m a psycho killer and you examine my past through this lens, you’re bound to find evidence to support this contention. This is classic data mining. You draw a conclusion and then mine the data retrospectively to find support for it. You invariably do. I’ll bet if we looked at your hometown and vicinity over all the years of your childhood we could find a disappearance or two, some murders, a few accidental deaths. Most that you wouldn’t even be aware of.”

“Probably. A few random events can be explained away as coincidences, but there is a limit. Your teachers—maybe a coincidence. But add in both of your parents and your uncle as well—I’m not buying it.”

Kira shook her head, pain etched in every line of her face, as if the wounds from these tragedies had never entirely healed. “I don’t know what to say. But I’m willing to bet you can find others who lost parents and also a relative in tragic accidents. Bad luck happens, David,” she insisted. “One of the ways I got through it all was by reminding myself of this. I was at least lucky enough to have many good years with my parents. There are orphans and kids in war zones who aren’t even that lucky,” she finished.

Desh frowned. This line of discussion was getting him nowhere. He wondered why he ever thought it would. What had he expected, a confession? And she did have a point. He did bring bias into the equation. If he hadn’t already been shown evidence she was a psychopath he would have viewed these events quite differently. He’d probably be consoling her for her loss right now.

Desh sighed. “Let’s table this one for a while,” he suggested. “Why don’t you tell me about your fountain of youth.”

Kira nodded as the waiter appeared again with their bill. Desh paid him immediately with cash, including the tip, so he wouldn’t have reason to disturb them further.

Kira waited for him to leave and then resumed the discussion. “I had achieved my first goal, a further leap in intelligence, but was afraid to use it. About fourteen months after I was robbed I achieved a breakthrough on my second goal. Smith was accurate. I can double the span of human life.”

“How?” asked Desh, not wanting to have the conversation bog down but unable to repress his curiosity. “Just give me the Cliffs Notes version.”

Kira paused, as if considering how best to frame her response. “As I said before, our brains aren’t optimized for thought. Well, not surprisingly, our bodies aren’t optimized for longevity either. Again, all natural selection cares about is reproduction.” She took a sip of iced-tea and set it back down on the table. “If you have a mutation that enhances your ability to survive to childbearing age, this mutation will preferentially appear in future generations. But longevity genes don’t kick in until you’ve already done all the reproducing you’re ever going to do. The guy who dies at forty has just as much chance of having scores of children, and passing on his poor longevity genes, as the guy who dies at eighty has of passing on his good ones. There’s no evolutionary advantage to long life.”

Desh’s eyes narrowed. “But parents who live longer can increase their offspring’s chances of survival. So longevity genes should confer an advantage.”

“Very good,” she said. “This is true. There is evolutionary pressure on our genes to keep us alive long enough to ensure our children can take care of themselves. But after this point there’s no advantage to further longevity. In fact, there might even be evolutionary pressure against it.”

Desh looked confused.

“The elderly can be a burden on the clan when resources are scarce,” explained Kira. “Decreasing the chances of survival for future generations.”

A look of distaste came over Desh’s face. “So those clans whose elders have the decency to drop-dead early on and not drain further resources thrive more than those whose elders live forever?”

“During times of scarcity at least, yes. This is one probable explanation for why most life on Earth, including ours, is programmed to die.”

Desh’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What does that mean?” he said “I thought aging was the result of errors accumulating in our DNA.”

“Partially true. But a large part of aging is due to a form of planned obsolescence. Our immune systems weaken, we stop producing hormones like estrogen, our hair grays or falls out, our skin shrivels, the acuity of our hearing diminishes, and so on. Our bodies are programmed, at the level of our genes, to die.”

“You’re the scientist, but it’s hard for me to believe that’s true.”

“That’s because it happens gradually,” she said. “In some species, like pacific salmon and marsupial mice, it happens all at once. One day they have no signs whatsoever of aging and the next—bam—they’re dead from old age.” She paused. “Other species aren’t programmed to die at all, like rockfish and certain social insect queens.”

Desh tilted his head. “But they do die, right?”

“They die. They just don’t age as we know it. Eventually accidents or predators or starvation kills them.”

Desh had further questions but knew that now was not the time. “Go on,” he said.

“I studied these species extensively to understand why they didn’t age. I also took DNA samples from people who suffer from a rare aging disease called progeria. By the age of twelve progerics look and sound like elderly people.”

Desh shook his head sympathetically. “I’ve heard about that. What a horrible disease.” He paused. “Can I at least assume their DNA was illuminating?”

“Very. It led directly to the breakthrough I needed,” she said. “I had been studying everything I could find on the molecular basis of aging for years. But when I added data on the genetic differences between progeria victims and normals my optimized brain was able to put all the pieces together.”

“And you’re positive your treatment will work? That it really will double the span of human life?”

“Absolutely certain,” she said without hesitation. “One hundred percent.”

Desh had become stiff from his angled position in the booth as he continued to watch the entrance, and he shifted temporarily into a more comfortable position. “How can you be so sure?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand while continuing to grip the gun with his right.

“There are a number of ways,” replied Kira. “But you’d need a much deeper knowledge of molecular biology and medicine to understand most of them. One way is to look at cellular doubling times. Most people don’t know this, but most of your cells will only divide about fifty times in culture. This is called the Hayflick limit. As they approach fifty doublings they take longer and longer to divide and show signs of aging.”

“What happens after they divide fifty times?” asked Desh.

“They die,” she said simply.

Desh pondered this for a few seconds. “What about cancer cells?” he asked.

“Good question. Cancer cells are the exception. They’re the immortals among cells. Not only will they go beyond fifty doublings, they’ll continue doubling forever. It’s this unconstrained growth that eventually makes them deadly to their host.”

Desh was fascinated by all of this but he was out of his league and knew he needed to move on. “Let’s say I believe your longevity therapy works the way you say it does,” he began. “Let’s say I even believe you aren’t involved in bioterror. But here’s the question: if you really did discover the fountain of youth, why have you kept it a secret?”

Kira raised her eyebrows. “Because I didn’t want to be responsible for knocking humanity back to the Dark Ages,” she said simply.

David Desh spotted their waiter and motioned him over. They were in a dark, comfortable little corner of the vast mall and his fear of being discovered was waning by the minute. They had time before they had to catch the bus and he was in no hurry to leave.

“Can you start a new check for us?” asked Desh when the waiter arrived.

“Sure, what can I get for you?”

Desh quickly leafed through the menu. “We’ll both have hot fudge sundaes.”

The man nodded and hurried off.

“Hot fudge sundaes?” said Kira.

“I want an excuse to stay here longer,” he explained. He allowed himself to smile. “Besides, when I’m talking to you my brain needs all the glucose it can get.”

She looked almost bashful. “Sorry to have to throw so much at you at once. I know it’s like drinking from a fire-hose.”

Desh grinned at this. “Not at all. Once again you have me intrigued,” he said. “So please go on.”

“Smith told you his theory as to why I’ve kept longevity a secret,” she said. “To acquire great power and wealth.” She shook her head in disgust. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I’d love to share the treatment. The problem is, when I was still enhanced, I considered what the world would be like once I did. The conclusions I reached were shocking.”

Desh tried to guess where she was heading, but couldn’t.

“If everyone lives to be 150,” continued Kira, “what happens to the world’s population?”

For a moment Desh wondered if it was a trick question. He shrugged. “It would go up,” he said.

“It would go up,” she repeated. “A lot. At least as many people would be born each year but far fewer would die. And women would be at reproductive age twice as long. The planet is already overcrowded and getting steadily worse. Introduce my therapy and everyone would need to make room for their great, great, great grandparents.” She shook her head emphatically. “Doubling the span of human life would be an absolute disaster.”

“It’s true our society would have to make changes,” acknowledged Desh, “but you can’t be sure the effects would be catastrophic.”

“Overpopulation doesn’t just have physical effects, it has psychological effects as well,” she said. “A fascinating experiment was done on Norway rats years ago. The experimenters confined a population of them in a quarter-acre enclosure, provided plenty of food, and removed all predators. They expected the rat population to climb to 5,000, but it didn’t. It stabilized at 150. When they forced the population to exceed a comfortable density, even with unlimited food, they saw a dramatic increase in pathologic rat behavior. Withdrawal, cannibalism, homosexuality, and other uncharacteristic behaviors emerged.” Kira raised her eyebrows and eyed Desh knowingly. “You think human stress goes up a notch or two the more crowded it gets?”

Desh frowned. It didn’t take a brilliant scientist to answer this question.

“While enhanced, I quickly realized that if I made the therapy public, the population would reach critical levels very quickly. Within a few generations, at most, humanity would either be reduced to small populations living in Dark Age conditions or extinct. I’ve since run a number of computer simulations.”

“And?”

“And the simulations match my intuition exactly. There are a range of possible scenarios, but I’ll give you one of the more likely ones. The skyrocketing population results in vast economic collapse as resources are depleted and the number of jobs can’t expand as quickly as the need for them. Economies are geared to a retirement age of sixty-five or so, and an average lifespan of around eighty.” Kira paused. “You even joked about the need for an immortal to have a large retirement nest egg,” she reminded him.

Desh frowned. He had made the joke but had failed to consider its implications.

“We also spoke about longevity as a burden to younger generations,” she continued. “It is. Along with economic collapse, population growth causes conditions to get more and more unsanitary. Contagious diseases spread like wildfire. Massive famines become common. Fighting for survival and fueled by increases in aberrant human behavior, countries war on their international neighbors and soon unleash a nuclear Armageddon on the planet.”

Desh blanched. It sounded chillingly plausible. “But wouldn’t world governments realize the threat and implement strict birth-control policies?”

“Maybe. Doubtfully, but maybe. But is that what you would want? Buying increased survival at the expense of your offspring? This may sound perfectly reasonable to me when I’m enhanced, but the thought of it sickens me when I’m not.” Kira paused. “There is little doubt. Springing a seventy or eighty year life extension on the world would lead to the end of civilization.” She frowned and looked utterly disheartened.

The depth of despair on her face took Desh by surprise. “Kira?” he said gently, “are you okay?”

She nodded, but the sadness didn’t leave her eyes. “Just feeling sorry for myself,” she said softly. “My every effort blows up in my face. I can transform myself to a fantastic level of intelligence, but at the cost of becoming ruthless and losing much of my humanity. I find a way to dramatically slow the aging process, only to realize that doing so will destroy civilization.”

Desh sat in silence, unable to think of anything to say. He could understand her frustration. She was a modern day Midas, the king who was thrilled to be granted a touch of gold until he realized the devastating consequences: he couldn’t prevent his food or beloved daughter from turning into gold as well.

They sat in silence as the waiter arrived with their desserts. Kira put a spoonful of vanilla ice-cream and hot fudge into her mouth and swallowed unhappily. Desh found himself wondering if a being of infinite intelligence would still enjoy the taste of fudge.

As Desh began working on his own sundae he decided to change the subject. Kira still had Lusetti and her brother to explain, but he was beginning to think she would. “So what happened after you realized you couldn’t reveal your discovery?”

“I decided to throw in the towel. I vowed to stop all experiments on longevity and to never use my brain optimization therapy again.” She waited patiently for excess fudge to finish dripping off her long spoon so she could bring it to her mouth. “But it goes without saying the story didn’t end there. Someone had been keeping track of me, not with listening devices but the old fashioned way. I didn’t know it at the time, but Larry Lusetti, a Private Investigator, had been hired to keep tabs on me. He went through my garbage and spied on me through my windows like a peeping tom. It didn’t take long for him to discover I had stopped all experimentation.”

Desh considered. “I’m guessing this signaled Moriarty that you had made a breakthrough and didn’t need to experiment further.”

“That’s right. A few days later my condo was broken into again. I had long since stopped keeping records in a lab notebook. By then I was keeping my notes on my computer. The file was encoded and also protected by security I had devised while I was enhanced. Even if someone breached my computer, they’d have to decode the file. But a breach wasn’t possible. Not by a member of Homo sapiens at any rate.” She frowned deeply. “Which goes to show that just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you can’t be incredibly stupid at the same time.”

“Moriarty was able to open the file?”

She nodded. “After he broke into my condo, he must have taken one of the gellcaps that Morgan had stolen. He sat at the computer, enhanced, and was easily able to bypass my security.”

Kira scowled, clearly annoyed with herself even now. “I was lucky,” she continued. “I had been paranoid enough to only keep records of individual animal experiments on the computer, and philosophical musings. The actual step by step and gene by gene instructions for the longevity therapy, and for the second level of intelligence enhancement, were stored on a key-ring flash drive I kept with me at all times. There was no mention in my computer, whatsoever, that I had been working on an even greater level of intelligence enhancement. Moriarty still knows nothing about this. But I did have notes on the longevity therapy. He couldn’t get the recipe, but he learned that I had found a way to extend life.”

Desh’s eyes narrowed. “Smith knew you had slowed the aging process by half. He also said your ultimate plan on the road to immortality was to design nanobots to patrol the bloodstream, and then find a way to transfer consciousness.”

“That’s right. This general plan was recorded on my computer. It was my initial thinking before I realized what a disaster even the first step would be. Exactly as Smith described.”

“Interesting,” said Desh. “So do you think he’s Moriarty?”

Kira considered. “Maybe, but my intuition tells me no. I think he’s just Moriarty’s lieutenant.”

“Go on,” said Desh, pushing his barely touched dessert to the side, having concluded that he couldn’t split his focus between Kira Miller and the entrance and eat a dripping sundae at the same time.

“I knew as soon as Moriarty realized I’d discovered the fountain of youth he wouldn’t rest until he had it,” continued Kira. “Which meant I was in big trouble. I put the flash drive in a stainless steel pill bottle and buried it where I thought no one would ever find it. I memorized its GPS coordinates. And then I enhanced myself. I was panicked, and my thinking was scattershot, so even though I had just promised myself never to do it again, I felt I had no other choice.”

Desh nodded sympathetically. Under the circumstances he couldn’t blame her.

“Once I had transformed myself,” she continued, “it became clear what I needed to do. The instructions for reconstructing my therapies were dozens and dozens of typed pages long. To be absolutely certain that the secret was safe, even if I was under duress, I imprisoned my memories of the formulas and the GPS coordinates to the buried flash drive: even the memory of the general area in which it was buried. I partitioned these memories behind an impenetrable mental wall.” She sighed. “It wasn’t easy.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Desh.

“Even enhanced, finding and isolated specific memory traces in my own mind was an extraordinarily difficult challenge.”

“But you were able to do it?”

“Yes. I structured these memories so I could only access them if I made a powerful, conscious decision that I wanted to. And like a Chinese finger trap, I set it up so the more I fought to get at the memories while under duress, the stronger the barrier would become.” She paused. “As it turned out, I didn’t do this a moment too soon.”

Desh leaned forward intently.

“A few hours later Larry Lusetti broke into my condo and took me hostage,” said Kira. “He wanted the secret to extended life and told me he wasn’t leaving without it. He used truth drugs on me. They were very effective. I told him about the discovery and why I hadn’t shared it with the world. But when he asked about age retardation, I told him I didn’t remember the recipe.”

“Which was now absolutely true,” said Desh.

Kira nodded. She took a final bite of her sundae, her spoon clinking loudly against the sides of the tall parfait glass as she retrieved it, and pushed it aside. “Unfortunately, I was unable to hold anything else back from him. Under the drugs I told him about the flash drive. I told him exactly how I had partitioned the GPS coordinates in my memory so I couldn’t retrieve them under duress. He dutifully reported this to Moriarty.”

“And did Moriarty believe you?”

“I assume so. If not, I think he would have had Lusetti use torture in addition to truth drugs, which he never did.” Kira paused as if bracing herself to continue, dreading the prospect.

Desh could sense something was very wrong. “What happened then?” he prompted gently.

“I woke up the next morning, still a hostage.” She looked off into the distance and a tear slowly formed in the corner of one eye. “And Lusetti told me they had my brother, Alan.”

Desh’s eyes widened as the connections became obvious.

“Lusetti told me his boss was in Alan’s home in Cincinnati,” she whispered in horror, “and would burn my brother alive unless I gave him the secret.”

“Did you?” said Desh softly.

She looked pale as she shook her head no.

Desh realized he had asked a stupid question. If Moriarty already had the fountain of youth, he wouldn’t be so desperate to capture her alive.

“I knew that Moriarty was a man without principles before his brain was rewired,” she explained somberly. “But if he had the secret to extended life, he could become the biggest monster in history. What could stop him? He could enhance his intelligence and could use the promise of extended life to amass power beyond imagining. The kind of power that Smith accused me of wanting.”

Kira stopped and a single tear shook itself loose and rolled slowly down her cheek.

Moriarty had forced her to make an impossible decision, Desh realized. He could tell this had caused a deep rift to her psyche that would never heal. “You knew the stakes, and you did what you had to do,” he said softly. “I admire you for that.”

She shook her head as tears now welled up in both of her eyes. “I wasn’t a hero,” she said miserably. “I was a weakling. I would have done anything to save Alan, even at the risk of unleashing another Hitler on the world. I tried to unlock the memory with all of my might. But I couldn’t,” she whispered. “The barrier I had constructed was too good.” Kira lowered her eyes. “It didn’t matter, anyway. I knew in my heart that Moriarty would never let Alan go. Once I gave him what he wanted, he would kill Alan and me both—and Lusetti as well. We would be dangerous loose ends.”

Desh realized her analysis was dead on. She had truly been in a no win situation. “So what did you do?” he asked.

“I needed to buy time to rescue my brother. So I told Lusetti the truth. I told him I was trying but couldn’t reach these memories. The software I had set up in my mind to guard them wasn’t fooled. I explained I was under more duress because of the threat to my brother than if I was being physically tortured.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I think so,” she said, absently wiping a tear away with the back of her hand. “I pleaded with him to make sure Moriarty wouldn’t hurt Alan for twenty-four hours while I found a way to unlock my memories. He told me Moriarty agreed to this.”

“And then you killed Lusetti.”

She nodded. “He untied me for a bathroom break right after the call with his boss. I knew I had the upper hand in any struggle. I knew he couldn’t risk killing me before he had the fountain of youth. I was able to hit him with a marble bookend while he was trying to incapacitate me. I didn’t want to kill him,” she insisted, her voice distraught. “It just happened that way.”

Desh’s eyes narrowed. “So you rushed to Lusetti’s apartment, hoping you could learn who was pulling his strings,” he said.

“That’s right. I took his laptop and a file I found with my name on it and went straight to the airport. I took the first flight to Cincinnati, using one of the false identities I already had in place. I studied the file and laptop on the plane, but neither contained Moriarty’s identity.”

Kira gathered herself. “I’m sure you’ve guessed the rest by now,” she said. “The plane landed and I raced to my brother’s house. I was determined to do whatever it took to save his life.”

“But you were too late,” said Desh solemnly.

A tortured expression came over Kira’s face and eyes. “I was too late,” she repeated softly, shuddering. She picked up a napkin and wiped away several tears that had begun to roll their way slowly down her face. “I had a special relationship with my brother Alan. He was five years older and always looked out for me. When other kids taunted me because I was different, or because I had skipped a few grades, he defended me. And then when my parents died—”

Her voice broke. She paused and fought to get her emotions under control. “Alan was in college then,” she said finally, her voice regaining strength. “At Ohio State. He took a year off to stay with me to make sure I would be okay. I pleaded with him not to put his own life on hold for me, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t go back to finish his degree until I left for college myself.”

Desh nodded sympathetically and waited for her to continue, but her expression indicated she was emotionally spent and couldn’t bear to talk about her brother any further.

“So once you realized you were too late to save him,” said Desh solemnly, “you knew you had to vanish from the grid.”

She nodded.

“I am truly sorry,” he said softly.

Silence hung over them like a rain cloud for several long seconds.

“You killed Lusetti,” said Desh finally. “But this was clearly in self defense. If what you say is true than you really haven’t committed any crimes.”

She sighed. “If you don’t count illegal human experimentation and misappropriation of corporate resources.”

“I don’t,” said Desh without hesitation.

Kira tried to force a smile but couldn’t quite manage it. “Moriarty has been hunting me ever since. He was probably already wealthy and powerful when he got into the game, not to mention ruthless. But it wouldn’t take twenty-three hours of superhuman intelligence to create immense wealth and power. I started with very little and created a fortune in no time. Think about what he’s been able to do in the last several years.”

Desh did and it wasn’t a pretty picture. “Any ideas who he might be?”

“None,” she said, beginning to recover her emotional equilibrium. “Whoever it is will be very subtle about his wealth and power. You won’t find him on the cover of business magazines. The truly powerful don’t advertise, they just pull strings from off stage.”

Desh thought about this and decided she was almost certainly correct.

“Whoever he is, he didn’t waste any time framing me for the murders of Lusetti and my brother. But that wasn’t enough to suit him. He decided to pin the Ebola plot on me as well so he could galvanize the entire US military against me. I don’t know if he has any other plans with terrorists, but the evidence you’ve seen is due to his involvement, not mine.”

“What does he gain by working with terrorists?” asked Desh.

“I don’t know. But there has to be more to it than we’re seeing. Because I’m convinced he won’t be able to perfect a genetically engineered cold virus capable of delivering Ebola genes.”

“Why not?”

“Too complex a project.”

“Even with enhanced intelligence?”

“Yes. When my mind is transformed, I have thousands and thousands of hours of the study of molecular biology in my memory for my intellect to draw upon. He almost certainly doesn’t. Without this, no matter how great his intelligence, he doesn’t have the knowledge base to succeed.”

Desh frowned. The more he learned, the more confused he became. He decided to move on. “So why does he want you now? He already knows he can’t force the secret of longevity from you.”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “But he’s taking great pains to capture me alive, even knowing I’m his biggest threat and won’t rest until I’ve stopped him. It’s obvious he hasn’t given up on the fountain of youth.”

They sat in silence for several seconds. Finally, Desh glanced at his watch and sighed. “We’d better go,” he said. “We have a bus to catch.”

Desh paid for the sundaes and they cautiously returned to the main mall. He scanned their surroundings for several minutes but didn’t detect anything out of place.

Desh gave Kira a questioning look as they made their way across the mall. “So why me, Kira?” he asked simply.

She sighed. “I already told you. You’re a good man. And when the chips are down, you’ll do the right thing. You’re an expert at finding people. You have Special Forces training. You’re smart and well read. I’ve been trying to find Moriarty and stop him, but I’ve gotten nowhere.”

Kira reached out and placed her hand in front of Desh, signaling him to stop walking. When he did she looked deeply into his eyes and he sensed she was deciding if she wanted to say more. Finally she lowered her eyes. “And I was lonely,” she said softly. “I’ve been on the run for a very long time. Not trusting anyone. Suspicious of everything.” She paused. “But I can’t stop Moriarty alone. As I studied your history, I realized I needed the help of someone like you; someone I could trust.”

So she had risked kidnapping him, even though he couldn’t have been more biased against her, to convince him to become her ally. Just as she had told him at the motel. And she had taken an even greater risk by putting herself under his control at the clearing. He still had a few nagging suspicions but he would put them to rest—for now.

Kira gazed into his eyes hopefully. “Will you help me, David?” she asked.

Desh held her stare for several seconds and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” he said finally. “I will.”

Kira let out the breath she had been holding. “Thank you,” she whispered earnestly. “And I really am sorry for bringing you into all of this. It was selfish of me.”

“No it wasn’t,” said Desh firmly. The corners of his mouth turned up into a slight smile. “And you didn’t bring me into anything. I was hired by Colonel Jim Connelly to find and stop a psychopathic killer who was off the grid, and that’s still what I’m doing.”

Kira’s features hardened. “I’m going to stop this bastard if it’s the last thing I do,” she vowed through clenched teeth, her face now a mask of hatred. “I swear on my brother’s soul that I’ll get him. A tragic accident took my parents from me, but Moriarty murdered the only other person I really ever loved; my only remaining family.”

A deadly gleam came to her eye. “And someday—soon—he’s going to pay for that.”

They exited the bus in downtown Richmond and took a cab to a used car lot. There they paid cash for a aging pick-up truck.

Griffin had called while they were on the bus and he and Connelly were doing well, despite the fact, as Griffin had put it, that being forced to shave his beard had surely “scarred and traumatized him for life.” They had arrived at the house of Connelly’s retired doctor friend without incident and Connelly was getting treatment.

Desh took the driver’s seat of the used pick-up when the transaction was completed. “Where to?” he asked.

“Get back on 95 north,” replied Kira. “Let’s go to my place.”

“You have a place? After all this time on the run?”

Her eyes danced playfully. “It’s a motor home. I live in a trailer park.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why do you say that?” she said impishly.

Desh shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re a brilliant scientist whose discoveries could change the world. You just don’t picture someone like that in an RV.” He smiled broadly. “Albert Einstein living in a trailer park just seems wrong to me.”

She laughed. “That’s why it’s so perfect. A trailer park is the last place the old me would ever think of living and the last place anyone would think to look. And this way, I can change locations every month or so and still have a sense of home.”

It was a sound strategy, Desh realized, once you stopped to think about it. “I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never been to a trailer park.”

“You’re in for a treat then,” she said. “I have three RVs as a matter of fact. One on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and one in the heartland. The last two are just safety valves. I paid for a year at the trailer park in advance so they’ll be there for me if I need them.”

“I can hardly wait to see it,” said Desh, stopping at a red light. “So tell me about your search for Moriarty.”

“I will. But not now. I’ve been doing all of the talking. It’s your turn.”

“In my defense, I was too busy doing the mistrusting and glaring for that.”

“Given what you were told, I can’t blame you,” she said. “But tell me about you. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to know anyone. How did you end up in the military?” She paused. “Or did you feel like you really didn’t have a choice?”

For just a moment Desh had forgotten that she had made a study of him, but her question reminded him immediately. His father had been a general, a fact that she well knew as evidenced by her question. She certainly hadn’t wasted any time on small talk, although with everything they had been through, he realized, small talk at this point would be a little ridiculous.

“I had a choice,” he answered. “Definitely. Dad wasn’t like that. He loved being in the military but he wanted me and my brother to do what made us happy. In the end, I joined up, not because he pressured me, but because he set such a good example. He was compassionate and friendly and had a great sense of humor.” Desh paused. “Most people picture military lifers as rigid, inflexible, authoritarian bureaucrats—and many of them are—but not my father.”

“What did your mother think of it all?”

“She had a similar philosophy. She wanted us to be happy. She admired my dad, but she made sure we knew the sacrifices we would be making if we joined up. Funny,” he added, “my brother joined up also. Went to Annapolis. I sometimes wonder if either of my folks had put pressure on us if we would have done something else, just to rebel.”

Desh hadn’t spoken of his father for a long time and his eyes reflected a deep loss.

“I’m sorry about your father,” said Kira softly.

He nodded. “If anyone knows about loss, it’s you,” he said. “Did any of my records say how it happened?”

“No. Just that he died in action.”

“Which is a misrepresentation,” said Desh dourly. “He was in Pakistan at a weeklong meeting with regional military leaders. He died buying fruit at a market near his hotel. Just another terrorist bombing. Ironic: he had seen a lot of action in his career, but he died off-duty and out of uniform.” His lip curled up in disgust. “They probably wouldn’t have bombed the place if they knew he was a general. They actually prefer killing civilians,” he said bitterly. “Generates more terror that way.”

Kira sighed supportively. After a few seconds of silence she said, “How’s your brother doing?”

“He’s doing well. I didn’t get to visit with him very often before I left the service. But since I became a civilian I’ve been seeing more of him.”

“Do you regret leaving the military?”

“Honestly, no. I feel a little selfish and maybe a little cowardly; but no. I was ready to leave even before the disaster in Iran. When you’re in the Delta Force you don’t form strong attachments to anyone outside your team—you can’t. Not really. And I didn’t want to go through life that way. I wanted to be a husband and father someday.”

They drove on in silence for several minutes. “You mentioned Iran,” began Kira hesitantly. “What happened there exactly?”

“You must have read the after action report.”

“I skimmed through it,” she acknowledged. “But it was lengthy and I didn’t read it carefully. Besides,” she continued, “If we’re going to be allies, David, the more insight we have into each other, the better. I’d be interested in hearing these events in your own words.”

Desh shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell,” he lied. He had planned to stop there when it occurred to him that Kira had bared her soul at the restaurant. Maybe it was his turn. He sighed heavily. “Okay, I’ll give you an abbreviated version.”

Desh paused and gathered himself. “Intel had finally located the leader of a terror group, Khalid Abdul-Malik. He was responsible for a series of bombings of churches and synagogues around the world, all timed during religious services to maximize casualties. He was headquartered just outside of Sanandaj, on Iran’s western border. We were sent in to capture him if possible, kill him if not. Our insertion was flawless.”

Desh tilted his head, remembering. “Satellites had picked up Abdul-Malik and some of his key lieutenants on the move, headed toward the nearby town of Mahabad, and we planned an ambush.” He shook his head, a tormented expression on his face. “But we were ambushed instead,” he said sullenly. He fell silent for several long seconds and then added, “They had been expecting us.”

“You were set up?”

“No question about it. I have no idea how.” Desh turned away from Kira and kept his gaze focused steadily on the road ahead, bracing himself to continue. “We were all taken prisoners, me and the three other members of my team. Since I was team commander, the terrorists decided to punish me by torturing my men to death in front of me—men who I loved as brothers.” He looked as if he might vomit. “My head was tied in position and my eyes were pried open. I couldn’t turn my head and I couldn’t look away.” He shuddered. “There are tortures beyond the imaginings of the most gifted horror writer,” he whispered.

There was a long silence as Kira waited for him to continue.

“I won’t describe what happened next,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t do that to anybody. Suffice it to say they were tortured and then butchered.” Hatred welled up in his eyes. “And these sick bastards enjoyed every minute of it, too.”

“How did you escape?” asked Kira softly.

“They had finished with my men,” said Desh, his voice now dead and emotionless. “I was next. There were three guards with me at the time. While one of them was peeing out back, one of them slipped on a pool of blood and fell. A man has only six quarts of blood in his body. Six quarts doesn’t seem like a lot until you’re covered in it, and you see the rest spilled on the ground. Eighteen quarts is hard to imagine.”

Kira shuddered from the mental picture he had painted.

“I was tied to a chair,” continued Desh. “But after the guard fell I gave him a face-full of chair-leg. I dove on the other guard, chair and all, to prevent him from using his gun, but he managed to stab me several times with his knife before I was able to head-butt him into unconsciousness. I escaped and eventually made it across the border to Iraq.”

“I do remember this part,” said Kira. “I read the soldiers who found you in Iraq couldn’t believe you had made it so far in the condition you were in. They were astonished by your stamina and force of will.”

Desh grimaced. “I should have died with my men,” he whispered. “In the Special Forces, we take the code of leaving no man behind very seriously.” His eyes moistened and he shook his head sadly. “The truth is that my men had been so badly butchered there wasn’t enough left of their bodies to bring back, even if I could have.”

David Desh accelerated onto the Interstate 95 onramp and merged with highway traffic.

“I don’t know what to say,” said Kira helplessly.

“There’s nothing to say. Seems that we’ve both had our share of bad luck and battle scars. When the stakes are high, the penalties can be high,” he said.

They drove on for several minutes until Kira finally broke the silence, deciding a change in subject was in order. “Look, David,” she said hesitantly, “at the risk of sounding like a drug pusher, I’d like you to take one of my gellcaps.”

Desh eyed her with interest. “Why?” he said simply.

“I appreciate you agreeing to become my ally, but we both know you still don’t trust me a hundred percent. How can you? There’s been so much going on and so many complexities to this story that only a fool would fail to harbor at least a little doubt. And you’re anything but a fool. In the recesses of your mind, you still can’t help but wonder if I’m just a great actress and this is all some kind of diabolical plan of mine.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I won’t deny it. But the doubt has shrunk from a hundred percent to about five percent, if that makes you feel any better.”

“It does. But taking a gellcap will eliminate any remaining reservations. Sure, you might believe intellectually that I’ve succeeded in radically transforming the human brain, but for you to really trust that all of this is real, you have to experience it for yourself. I could tell you more about what it’s like, but until you’ve experienced it yourself no description I could offer could do it justice. Once you’ve been enhanced you’ll know that everything I’ve told you is true. Down to the last detail.”

Desh pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Kira,” he said reluctantly. “I’m not sure I like the idea of altering the architecture of my brain.”

“After everything I told you, I don’t blame you. But I promise the effect will only last about an hour. After that, you’ll be the exact same David Desh as always.”

“Yeah? How can you be so sure?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it again. “I guess I can’t be. Not absolutely. I know that you won’t feel any different. And the people I interacted with afterwards never noticed any changes in me—at least none I’m aware of.”

“What about the sociopathy?”

“As I mentioned, that effect builds. The first time you’re enhanced it’s like you’re Alice in Wonderland, too awestruck to have many ruthless thoughts. Repeated exposure further numbs the emotions and increases your feelings of omnipotence.”

“And then—what?—you graduate from Alice to Frodo to Darth?” he said wryly.

She frowned. “I use too many silly literary metaphors, don’t I?”

Desh couldn’t help but smile. “Not at all,” he said reassuringly. “And I’m the one who came up with Moriarty. So maybe we’re two peas in a pod.”

Kira caught his eye and sighed deeply. “It would really mean a lot to me, David. You have to experience it to truly understand it.”

Desh returned her gaze briefly and then shifted his eyes back to the road as he considered her request. “Okay,” he said finally, still with some reluctance. “I’ll do it.”

“Thanks David,” she said in relief. “This will erase any lingering doubts. I promise. And it will also surpass your wildest expectations.” Her right hand went to her neck and located a silver chain that had been hidden by her clothing. She lifted, pulling the chain up until a silver locket emerged from under her sweatshirt. The locket was heart-shaped and about the circumference of a quarter. She repositioning the necklace so it and the locket were now on the outside of her jacket.

“I just happen to have a dose on hand,” she announced.

“There’s a gellcap inside that locket?” he said in disbelief.

“Absolutely.”

“I don’t know, Kira,” said Desh, rolling his eyes. “Wearing the One Ring of Power around your neck in pill form? Maybe you are taking this Frodo thing a bit far.”

Kira grinned. “Okay,” she said, amused. “I admit I’m a bit of a geek.” She became serious once more. “The truth is that it’s a symbolic gesture that strengthens my resolve to never enhance myself again. I want to stop Moriarty, not become him. Having a dose around my neck reminds me of the danger of giving in to the lure of power.”

“You played a lot of Dungeons And Dragons as a kid, didn’t you?” said Desh wryly.

A playful smile lit up her face. “All right,” she said. “I can’t deny that it’s corny. But it really has helped. And, just for the record, I’ve never played Dungeons And Dragons in my life.” She paused and motioned toward the locket. “Are you ready?”

Desh frowned. “Right now?”

“Why not?”

“I’ll do it, but let’s hold off. I’d rather not be in a car when I take it, and I’d love to have a good night’s sleep as well. How about if I try it in the morning?”

Kira nodded. “Whenever you feel up to it. I guess I’m just anxious to develop that deeper level of trust. Besides,” she added, “I’ve never been able to compare notes with anyone.”

As they drove they continued a lively conversation. Now that they were allies, Desh found he had an easy rapport with her. About seventy-five minutes into the drive, Kira called a stop for what she called a biological break.

Desh exited the highway and drove into a small gas station with only two pumps and without the ubiquitous mini-store. He pulled up to the pump closest to a small brick structure that contained bathrooms. He exited the pick-up and began to top off the tank while Kira got the restroom key from the attendant.

Kira had just returned the key and was crossing Desh’s path as he hung up the nozzle, on her way back to the passenger seat, when Desh’s heart leaped to his throat.

Chopper blades! Again!

Before Desh could move or call out a warning, Kira collapsed to the ground in front of him, a small dart protruding from her neck.

Desh had already evaluated their current location and knew there was nowhere to run or hide. The chopper was coming closer and he only had an instant to act.

He threw himself to the ground next to Kira to buy himself an additional few seconds while his mind churned furiously. He realized in desperation he had only one option. Reaching out, he clutched the chain around Kira’s neck and yanked as hard as he could. The chain snapped and the locket slid to the pavement. Desh tossed the chain as far away from them as he could and snatched the free locket, hurriedly shoving it into his mouth. He used his tongue to push the small, silver heart into the back of his mouth; shoving its point into his cheek to lodge it snugly between his teeth and gums, like a chaw of tobacco, hoping it was too small to cause a visible bulge.

His tongue was still pressed against the locket when he felt a sharp sting in his own neck and he drifted off into a dreamless oblivion.