Deadlock (8 page)

‘What can I do for you, Mr Simons?’ Flack asked as the young analyst walked into his office.

‘I thought you’d want to see this, sir,’ Simons said, placing the sheet of paper on the desk in front of him. Printed on it was a black-and-white image that, judging by the poor quality, had been captured from a surveillance-camera feed. It showed a fuzzy image of a teenage boy and a tall dark-haired woman walking through a pair of large glass doors. The only thing unusual about the boy was the spiky snow-white hair on his head.

‘Shut the door,’ Flack said, studying the image. ‘When and where was this taken?’

‘Yesterday morning,’ Simons replied, ‘at the Ritz Carlton in Phoenix. The secret service had been running all of the surveillance feed to see if they could identify whoever it was that attacked Senator Ronson’s wife and son. Our facial-recognition software raised a possible Person of Interest flag and when I checked the alert it was level five.’

Level five was the highest-level flag that could be assigned to an individual by Artemis Section. The section was one of the most secretive and powerful branches of the Central Intelligence Agency. Their job was simple: they found people, people who almost invariably wanted very much not to be found, and they were exceptionally good at their job. As head of the section Robert Flack joked that he reported to only two people, God and the President, and that unlike the President he was an atheist. Now he studied the photo, peering over the half-moon glasses that were perched on the end of his nose. A frown appeared on his gaunt, almost skeletal face as he turned his attention to the woman walking beside the boy in the photo.

‘That’s definitely Malpense,’ Flack said, gesturing for Simons to take the seat on the other side of the desk, ‘but who’s this with him, I wonder.’

It had been over six months since Flack had been personally instructed by the President with discovering all there was to know about the mysterious young man known as Otto Malpense. They had first become aware of Malpense when he had saved the President’s life when Airforce One had been hijacked in mid-air by terrorists. He had then been taken into custody by the disgraced rogue intelligence agency H.O.P.E. and subsequently vanished. Several months after that he had contacted the President during the crisis that had arisen when hostile forces had attacked the Army’s Advanced Weapons Project facility and taken various high-ranking military officers and civilians hostage. The boy had persuaded the President to give him the launch codes to Thor’s Hammer, an orbital nuclear-weapon launch platform, and had then used it to destroy a weaponised nanite swarm that would otherwise have almost certainly killed every living thing on the face of the planet. Immediately after this incident, the truth of which was only known to a handful people outside of the Oval Office, the President had ordered Flack to find out just who Otto Malpense was and whether he posed an ongoing threat to the nation’s security. The stark fact of the matter was that Flack knew almost as little about Otto Malpense today as he had when he had been tasked with the investigation. He had been a prisoner of H.O.P.E. for some considerable time, but all of that agency’s records had been lost during the chaos of its dramatic collapse. As it stood he had little more than the boy’s name and a handful of images. Now here he was, walking into the same hotel that Matt Ronson had been staying at on the night before he died in such mysterious circumstances.

‘She’s no one,’ Simons replied, ‘apparently.’

‘Really?’ Flack said, sounding surprised. ‘You ran her?’

‘Through every database we have,’ Simons replied. ‘Not one hit. She’s a ghost.’

‘There’s no such thing, Simons, you know that.’

‘I know, sir, but there’s no trace of an ID for her.’

Flack’s puzzled frown deepened further. By this point in the twenty-first century it was staggeringly difficult to erase all traces of a person’s identity. The American government alone had poured trillions of dollars into making sure that they could always put a name to a face. Beating the system and moving around freely on American soil was supposed to be next to impossible.

‘Do you want me to broaden the search?’ Simons asked. ‘I could put this out on the black net and see who bites.’

‘No,’ Flack said, ‘The last thing I want is to spook Malpense and whoever this woman is and send them into hiding. I’m going to feed her image to some allied agencies and see if we can get any hits in the next few days. If she is with Malpense we can track him that way without flagging our interest in him to anyone else.’

‘OK, boss,’ Simons replied. He was halfway to Flack’s office door when he turned back with a half-smile on his face. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell me who this kid is and why everyone’s so interested in him, can you?’

‘Sure, no problem,’ Flack said, raising an eyebrow. ‘All you have to do is get yourself elected President.’

chapter four

Wing stood in the doorway of Shelby’s room keeping watch for any sign of one of H.I.V.E.’s many security guards while Shelby and Franz sat staring at the monitor attached to the terminal on her desk.

‘I am thinking that maybe we are needing Otto or Laura at this point,’ Franz said with a puzzled frown as he examined the text on the screen.

‘Yeah, well, we’re just going to have to do our best without them,’ Shelby replied. ‘I think I’m nearly there. If I just try and log in through this proxy then –’

Shelby’s terminal emitted a loud warning tone and the screen went black save for two lines of glowing red text in the centre of the screen.

ACCESS DENIED

ONE LOGIN ATTEMPT REMAINING

‘Damn!’ Shelby spat, slamming her hand down on the desk. ‘I was sure that was it.’

‘I am thinking it is a good thing that H.I.V.E.mind is offline for maintenance,’ Franz said with a sigh. The artificial intelligence that normally ran the school’s electrical and data systems had been down for the past couple of months. There had been no real explanation as to why, other than Professor Pike occasionally muttering something under his breath about ‘substantial upgrades’.

‘At least if he was online we could just ask him nicely what’s going on,’ Shelby said, ‘instead of trying to pretend that I know what I’m doing with one of these things. Who knows what kinds of alarms I’m going to trigger if I keep messing around like this. I should have guessed it wouldn’t be easy. I just figured that if we had Pike’s login we’d be able to get access, but there are so many extra levels of security. I know that it pays to be careful, but Nero has the network locked down tight. I’ve no doubt that Snow White or Laura could waltz past it all, but I never really got the hang of this whole hacking thing. Just don’t have the nerd gene, I guess.’

‘You can’t blame Nero for being cautious. After the attack on the Hunt he has good reason to be slightly paranoid. I think it’s time we found an alternate means of acquiring the information,’ Wing said.

‘I’m open to suggestions at this point,’ Shelby said with a sigh. ‘Because I am officially out of ideas.’

‘I am having one idea,’ Franz said, ‘but it is being the long shoot.’

‘OK, I’d be willing to try just about anything at this point,’ Shelby said.

‘We will be harnessing the power of mesmerism,’ Franz said conspiratorially. ‘If Doctor Nero will not be giving us this information willingly then we will using the power of the mind to compel him to be telling us.’

‘Erm, Franz,’ Shelby said, ‘are you suggesting that we
hypnotise
Nero?’

‘Ja,’ Franz replied, ‘once he is being in a hypnotic trance he will be telling us everything we want to know. I have been doing some research and I believe I could induce such a trance.’

Shelby, for once, looked like she was lost for words, simply staring back at Franz with a look of utter disbelief on her face.

‘Franz, correct me if I am wrong,’ Wing said, ‘but even if you do believe in the power of hypnotic compulsion, isn’t it only supposed to work on the weak-willed.’

‘Yes, that is being correct,’ Franz nodded.

‘And so you would classify Doctor Nero, a man who single-handedly controls the massed ranks of global villainy, runs the most secret school on the planet and faces constant and serious threats to his life from all directions, in fact, altogether one of the most powerful and cunning men on the planet as
weak-willed
?’

‘Not to mention the fact that we would presumably also have to persuade him to sit down while the Great Franz, Hypnotist Extraordinaire, dangles a pocket watch in front of his face,’ Shelby said.

‘I am admitting that there may be some small kinks to be ironed out in the plan,’ Franz said, looking slightly uncomfortable.

‘Franz,’ Shelby said, standing up and grabbing him by both shoulders, ‘that is perhaps . . . no wait . . . that is quite definitely the worst plan that I have heard since some idiot suggested that we try to escape from H.I.V.E. through the laundry system. Well done.’

‘There is no need to be being rude about it,’ Franz said with an indignant sniff. ‘I am just trying to be helping.’

‘I need to go for a walk,’ Shelby said, shaking her head. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ She strode past Wing and on to the walkway balcony that ran around the outside of the enormous cavern that housed accommodation block seven, their home since their arrival at H.I.V.E.

‘Actually,’ Wing said quietly to Franz, as they walked along a few metres behind Shelby, ‘I thought it was quite a good plan, it just requires quite a lot of . . . refinement. Perhaps, for now, we just need something a bit more conventional.’

‘Thank you, Wing,’ Franz said. ‘I was knowing that you were being a person of vision, but maybe you are being right. I will be stopping thinking outside the bag.’

The three of them headed down the stairs at the end of the walkway and out into the cavern’s central atrium. They took no notice of the students who fell silent as they walked past or who eyed them with suspicion from across the room. They were halfway across the huge room when they spotted Professor Pike walking into the accommodation block with a frown on his face. He looked around for a moment and then spotted Shelby, Wing and Franz and headed towards them.

‘Uh-oh,’ Shelby said quietly. ‘What does he want?’

‘I can make an educated guess,’ Wing said as the white-haired old man approached.

‘Ahhh, Miss Trinity, Mr Fanchu, Mr Argentblum,’ he said nodding to each of them in turn, ‘just the people I was looking for. I was wondering if you could help me with something?’

‘Of course, Professor,’ Wing replied calmly. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘I seem to have misplaced a rather important piece of paper,’ the Professor said with the vaguest hint of a smile. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen it lying around anywhere, have you? I could have sworn I left it in my safe in my office, but I’m getting very absent-minded in my old age and if someone did happen upon it I would hate them to try and use it
incorrectly.
’

‘We’ll . . . erm . . . keep an eye out for it,’ Shelby replied.

‘Good, please do,’ the Professor said, ‘because if someone did, for example, make two failed attempts to access the master server and then subsequently make a third attempt that failed, it would cause all sorts of flags to pop up at the central security command station. Which would be most uncomfortable for all concerned. If, however, they were to use it in combination with an access key like this,’ the Professor reached into the pocket of his lab coat and produced a tiny thumb drive, ‘they would probably be able to read all kinds of interesting information. The sort of information that some people don’t think it would hurt for them to have access to perhaps. The real beauty of it would be that nobody would ever know. Mr Fanchu, would you mind holding this while I find my glasses.’ He gave the access key to Wing and began patting his pockets. ‘Oh blast, where are they?’

‘Professor,’ Shelby said, pointing at the glasses perched on top of his head.

‘Aaaah, of course,’ the Professor said, pulling the glasses down on to his face. ‘Thank you, Miss Trinity, like I said, I’m becoming so very absent-minded. I’m always forgetting where things are or that I’ve given them to people. Anyway, must dash, toodle-pip!’

With that he turned back towards the entrance to the accommodation block. He walked a few metres and then stopped.

‘By the way, Miss Trinity,’ he said, ‘I’ve scheduled in a few extra cyber-security seminars for you. Something tells me you need them. Not all locks can be picked physically, you know.’

Shelby, Wing and Franz watched as he walked away and then all three of them looked down at the access key still sitting in Wing’s hand.

‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ Shelby said. ‘He actually looked slightly disappointed.’