Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (38 page)

T
uesday 2041.01.08

Pryce waited as the imagery came up on the screen, as Miles Jameson’s Montana ranch came into view of the NRO satellite she’d re-tasked.

There was going to be hell to pay for this.

“This is a really bad idea, boss,” Kaori said, her voice low, urgent. “Why don’t you take this to the Attorney General?”

Pryce shook her head. Sam Cruz was deep in the President’s camp. There was no hope there.

“No, Kaori. You heard me. You have a copy. If anything happens, you take
everything
to Stan Kim.”

Kaori pursed her lips at that. “If anything happens to you, that is.” She sounded unhappy. “You’re not a field agent, boss.”

Pryce ignored that and concentrated on the screen. There it was. She zoomed in the image.

Snow. Sprawling complex. Three buildings. Six, seven vehicles in sight. Any number in the garages.

Field ops succeeded or failed based on intelligence and planning. That’s what it really came down to.

“Tell me again how we know he’s in there,” Pryce said.

Kaori ticked the data points off on her fingers. “One, the Secret Service roster shows his detail is there presently. All of them. Two, NSA shows his phone there. Three, NSA shows the phones of his aides are there. Four, satellite data shows no evidence of him leaving. He’s in a wheelchair. It’s pretty obvious when he comes and goes. He hasn’t left for weeks.”

Pryce nodded. “Time he got a visitor, then.”

P
ryce stared
out at the windows of the charter plane as it came down towards the airport outside of Billings, Montana. The state was blanketed in white, smothered in snow, illuminated by early morning glow, even as the rest of the country went through the mildest winter on record.

Warm air carries more moisture
, she remembered an officer lecturing in one of the Pentagon briefings on climate-driven conflict.
Sucks it away from some places, concentrates it in others. We’re seeing more dry winter days and more blizzards. More droughts and more super-storms.

She shook her head. That was a problem for her day job.

Right now…

Right now her problem was to unravel a mystery.

To spring a trap on a President. On two Presidents.

And then to stay alive.

Planning. Superior planning. Superior intelligence. The element of surprise.

She had all of those. She’d thought the plan through backwards and forwards, gamed it out in dozens of different scenarios.

So why was there a knot in her stomach?

Maybe I should have taken that Secret Service detail after all, she thought.

T
he car was waiting
for her on the tarmac, as she’d requested, a sleek silver all-wheel sedan under a uniformly grey sky. The flight crew helped her load the gear bags she’d brought into the trunk. Pryce thanked them, re-confirmed her next booking with them, and then was off.

The drive from Billings to Miles Jameson’s ranch took five hours, across icy, treacherous roads, with high winds gusting across them. More than once the car decided to stop and shelter until conditions improved. Each time she urged it on. Vehicular traffic was light, to say the least.

She could have chosen a closer airfield to land in, but she hadn’t.

She could have rented the car under a false name, but she hadn’t.

The trap had to be baited. The bait had to be dangled long enough for the predator to pounce.

And the bait was her.

S
he didn’t know
when Jameson’s Secret Service first became aware of her. Sixteen kilometers back, when she’d taken the road that led to just four ranches, of which Jameson’s was one? Thirty-two kilometers back, when she’d driven through the one horse town on the way here? Further back? As far back as Billings? She hoped not. That would not bode well for her plans.

One way or another, they were waiting for her at the gate to Jameson’s sprawling ranch. Two large black SUVs sat there, behind the gate, windows tinted, their door and body panels bulging in ways that spoke of armor reinforcement. In front of the gate stood two tall, broad shouldered men in mirrored glasses and heavy black coats with SECRET SERVICE loudly emblazoned in red. Large automatic weapons were openly held in their gloved hands, pointed down.

The house was somewhere back there, more than a mile away, well out of sight.

One held up a hand towards her, palm out. The Tesla was stopping itself already.

The agent who’d held his hand out walked towards her, towards the driver’s side. The other stood there, immobile, impassive, blocking her way.

These are Secret Service agents, Pryce told herself. They’re loyal. These are the ones I can trust.

Staring at the guns in the hands of the massively muscled men with their lethal fourth generation enhancements, it sounded hollow.

Pryce rolled down her window as the agent drew near.

He leaned down, his eyes hidden by his mirrored shades, his jaw a sculpted thing. Pryce didn’t recognize him.

“Dr Pryce,” the agent said, his voice a gravely bass. “We weren’t expecting you.”

Pryce didn’t react to the use of her name. She’d known they’d have her ID’d by now. By the registration of the car. By her phone. By facial recognition once she’d drawn near enough.

She turned away from the agent, looked straight ahead at his partner. “I’m here to see President Jameson,” she said curtly, the voice of a Cabinet member to an underling.

“I’m afraid you’re not on our list of visitors for today, Doctor,” the agent said. “I’m going to have to ask you to turn around and depart.”

Pryce turned and looked back at him now, let anger show on her face.

“Young man,” she said, acidly. “I am the
National Security Advisor
to the
current
President of the United States. I’m here to see
former
President Jameson on that authority, to discuss a matter of the
gravest possible importance
to national security.”

She paused, watched the agent.

“Now, relay to Miles Jameson that I’m here. And that I’m
not
leaving until I see him.”

T
hey kept
her waiting for an hour. The anxiety built and built inside her. It was one thing to construct a plan, to game out a series of moves on a chessboard. It was one thing to know in the abstract that the sequence of moves
would
work.

It was another thing entirely to actually put oneself in play. To be the piece, on the board, at risk of capture should the opponent discover a flaw in one’s strategy.

The agents in front of her periodically held their fingers to their ears, made the tiny lip motions of men sub-vocalizing. They were talking with someone.

Then abruptly the gate was opening. One of the agents was motioning her out of the car.

Pryce opened her car door and rose.

“He’s ready for you, Dr Pryce,” the agent she’d spoken to told her. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll drive you down there.”

S
he sat
in the back of the massive armored SUV as the agent played chauffeur.

“I’m Agent Taggart,” he said.

“Carolyn Pryce,” she said, neutrally.

She saw the agent smile in the rear-view mirror, like Pryce introducing herself was the funniest thing in the world.

“You’re not cold in that thin jacket, Dr Pryce?”

“I left my parka in the car,” she answered.

T
aggart ferried
her to the vast, sprawling main ranch house, led her inside, and left her in the care of another Secret Service agent, a tall, muscular, dark-skinned woman Pryce recognized. Middle-eastern origin. A Muslim, if Pryce remembered right. Lebanese? Syrian? Something like that. You saw so few in this line of work.

What was her name?

“We have to ask you to relinquish your briefcase and phone, Dr Pryce,” she said, “along with your shoes, belt, and any jewelry. And I’m afraid we’re going to wand and search you.”

Pryce nodded. She’d expected that. What was the woman’s name?

She stripped herself of jewelry, kicked off her shoes, pulled off her rings, held out her arms as the agent wanded her, again and again, thoroughly.

“Now I’m going to pat you down, Dr Pryce,” the woman said. She was nearly six feet tall, with broad shoulders, strong arms.

The voice did it. Pryce kept her arms outstretched as the agent did a thorough, professional job.

“You were on President Jameson’s protection detail four or five years ago,” she told the woman. “When I was on the Veep’s staff.”

The agent smiled at her. “That’s right.”

“Your name’s… Noora?” Pryce went for it.

The agent smiled wider, finishing the pat down.

“You have a good memory, Dr Pryce.”

Pryce smiled.

“You have to in this job.”

“Clear,” Noora said into her throat mike. Then to Pryce, “I’ll have your things waiting for you here when you’re done with the President, Doctor.”

T
hey led
her to a large library, with a peaked, two-story ceiling. Sliding double doors graced one wall. A gas fire was burning in the fireplace. Decadent. Jameson wasn’t here. No one was. But her skin tingled. She was certain she was being observed, being recorded, having every aspect of her physiology measured and analyzed.

Pryce walked to soothe herself, studying the books on the shelves, looking for a copy of Machiavelli’s
The Prince
or some such.

She found Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, instead, Mark Twain and Herman Melville. Classics, mostly. Expensive editions. Shelves and shelves of them. Not a speck of dust to be seen.

And then there, one short shelf of the early authors who’d warned of the perils of transhumanism. Fukuyama, a paper copy of
Our Posthuman Future
. Kass, the man they’d called “The President’s Philosopher” back at the turn of the century; a leather-bound edition of
Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity
; Barrat’s warning tome on sentient AI,
Our Final Invention;
even a copy of McKibben’s naturalist’s argument against human augmentation,
Enough
. That one surprised her.

A sound caught her attention. She turned. The double doors had slid open, and there was Miles Jameson, looking remarkably composed in a red button down shirt and black slacks in his wheelchair, a grey-haired man in a jacket and open-collar shirt next to him, and a muscular dark-haired young man in shirt and slacks behind him.

“Carolyn,” Jameson said, his voice still rich and strong. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Mr President,” Pryce replied. “It’s nice to see you. I need to ask you some questions, sir. Alone.”

“You’ve come all this way?” Jameson asked. “Just to ask me a few questions?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Pryce replied.

Jameson smiled.

“Ask away,” he said. “But I’m afraid I need my physician and my assistant with me at all times these days. The ravages of aging.” He folded his hands on his lap.

No introductions, Pryce noticed. No names. So be it. She nodded.

“You’ve seen the leaked memos, Mr President?” Pryce asked. “The ones alleging that the PLF was created as a black op under your administration, with your approval?”

Jameson waved his hand dismissively, unruffled. “Of course,” he said. “Complete fabrications. Please don’t tell me you believe that claptrap, Carolyn?”

Pryce gave a small laugh. “Of course not, Mr President,” she said, still smiling. “In fact, we have solid evidence now that it’s a fake.”

Jameson nodded emphatically. “Good!”

“Except the mention of HARBINGER,” she said.

Jameson’s head twitched the tiniest bit. His eyes widened fractionally. Then it passed.

He recognized the code word. Pryce was sure of it. And she’d surprised him.

Jameson opened his mouth to say something.

Pryce cut him off. “And CALVINIST.”

Jameson blinked, the word on his lips stalling for just half a second, at most.

It was enough. He recognized both of them.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carolyn,” Jameson went on with a smile. “I don’t think I recall either of those terms…”

The man in the suit tapped Jameson on the shoulder.

“Oh…” Pryce made a show of looking disappointed. “President Stockton was hoping you could fill him in on those.”

Jameson sighed and shook his head, slowly. “I’m afraid I can’t help you or John there, Carolyn.”

The man in the suit tapped Jameson on the shoulder again. This time he spoke.

“Mr President,” he said. “I’m very sorry to interrupt. I’ve just realized that we’re overdue for a dose of your medication.”

The doctor looked up apologetically at Pryce. “I’m sorry, Doctor. We’re going through a formulation change, you see.”

Pryce spread her arms wide. “Of course.”

Miles Jameson gave her an apologetic shrug, a smile on his face. “It was so nice to see you, Carolyn. Please give my best to John and Cindy for me.”

She nodded. “I’ll let myself out,” she said, her heart pounding.

P
ryce walked
as fast as she could without appearing alarmed. She collected her things from Noora, slipped her shoes on, gave her thanks.

“Agent Taggart will be here shortly to take you back to the gate, Dr Pryce,” the Secret Service agent told her.

“Thank you,” Pryce said. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She needed to go. Needed to get to her car, get to some place she could be alone. Needed to get the hell away from here.

Suddenly everything about how perfect her plan was seemed irrelevant. She was out in the field. Exposed. With a murderer. And his people.

Noora stepped back to her post, giving Pryce space as she looked out the windows of the front door, waiting for Taggart and his SUV to arrive.

“The President would like to speak to you further.”

She heard the voice from behind her. Then a hand like a vice closed around her bicep. She turned her head and Jameson’s “assistant” was there, the dark-haired young man looming over her. He was huge at this distance, well over six feet. Muscles bulged at his throat, at his exposed wrist and forearm.