“Can anyone tell me what exactly would have been wrong with a good old-fashioned blindfold?” Otto asked.
He sat up and took in his surroundings. He was sitting on a battered leather couch that was on one side of an enormous red-brick structure like a warehouse. The walls of the vast space were covered in hundreds of architectural drawings and technical diagrams. On every flat surface were scale models of buildings, or pieces of machinery. Otto spotted one model that was suspended in midair and realized that he had seen it before. He got up and walked toward the dangling miniature and inspected it more closely.
“This is the orbital platform that Number One . . . that Overlord took me and Nero to,” Otto said, eyes wide.
“Orbital platform?” a voice behind Otto said. “Call it what it is, boy, a space station.”
Otto turned to see an old man with a cane walking toward him. He had long white hair tied back in a ponytail and a neatly trimmed but full beard and piercing blue eyes. It was hard to tell his precise age, but he was clearly very old, though any physical infirmity that age had brought did not extend to the fire of intelligence that Otto could see dancing behind his eyes.
“A space station, yeah, sorry,” Otto said.
“That’s the problem with villains these days—always afraid to do something with a bit of imagination. Everything has to be grounded in reality, no ambition, I tell you. One of your lot,” he gestured at Darkdoom with his cane, “even told me last year that he didn’t want an undersea base because it was . . . and I quote . . . unrealistic. Unrealistic! I told him that if he wanted realism he should have hired Norman bloody Foster. No imagination.”
The old man stood next to Otto and pointed up at the model of Overlord’s space station with his cane.
“One of my most challenging projects actually,” the man said. “The design wasn’t that hard, but getting an orbital construction crew together was murder. Zero G construction isn’t something that it’s easy to get a lot of experience in. Thank God for the collapse of the Russian space program, that’s all I can say. Shame you had to go and destroy it, young man, but that’s the way with these things, I suppose. Tell me though—did it explode well? It’s very important that a villain’s base should explode well, that’s the main thing.”
“Erm . . . spectacularly well,” Otto replied, looking slightly bewildered.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised. I know all about you, Mr. Malpense,” the man said. “Quite the reputation you’ve made for yourself over the past couple of years. You just keep blowing up those bases, young man. It keeps me in work. Anyway, allow me to introduce myself. I’m the Architect, which is a slightly pompous title that gives me a bit of dramatic mystique, so you can call me Nathaniel.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Otto said, still somewhat taken aback.
“And you,” Nathaniel said, pointing his cane at her, “must be the infamous Raven. You don’t look so frightening to me, quite attractive actually. If only I was a half-century younger, eh?” He gave her a knowing wink and Otto only realized later that it was the first time he’d ever seen Raven blush.
“You may not have realized it at the time, my dear, but you actually did me a favor a while ago when you killed that hack Nazim Khan,” Nathaniel said, patting Raven on the shoulder. “Tried to set himself up as competition, built a couple of bases. Total amateur.”
“Actually Sebastian Trent killed him,” Raven replied, “to stop him telling me where the secret facility he had built for him was.”
“Never did like that Trent fellow,” Nathaniel said, shaking his head dismissively. “Don’t approve of that whole being a villain but pretending to be one of the good guys thing. Doesn’t sit right with me. That’s why I refused to build his base for him. That and the fact that he wanted to hide it behind a waterfall. I mean, honestly, what a lack of imagination. I blame video games.”
“Hello, Nathaniel,” Darkdoom said, a broad smile on his face. “It’s good to see you again, old friend.”
“And you too, Diabolus,” Nathaniel said, smiling back at him. “Lost all the hair now, I see. Not to worry, bald villains never go out of fashion.” He turned back to Otto. “Now Diabolus here is a villain after my own heart, my boy, bit of style. You won’t find many better role models these days.”
“Thank you, Nathaniel,” Darkdoom said, “but we do have pressing business we need to discuss.”
“We can discuss it over dinner,” Nathaniel said, “like civilized human beings. I’ll speak to Gretchen and see what she could rustle up. Wonderful girl, very bright, don’t know what I’d do without her really.”
With that he turned and walked out of the room, leaving Otto, Darkdoom, and Raven feeling like they’d just been the victims of a charming, if slightly rude, whirlwind.
“We don’t have time for this,” Raven said quietly as she watched him leave.
“Well, we’re going to have to make time,” Darkdoom replied, “because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about him over the years it’s that he can be as stubborn as a mule if he wants to be. We can’t rush this. If he decides he’s not going to help us then we may never find whatever rock Furan has crawled under.”
Otto walked over to the far side of the room and examined some of the pictures on the wall. Some of the blueprints were forty years old.
“I’m assuming you know exactly where we are,” Otto said quietly.
Oh yes, H.I.V.E.mind replied inside his head, and I think you might be surprised to hear what was discussed while you were unconscious. It was really quite interesting.
“Tell me everything,” Otto whispered with a smile.
Flack stood in the center of the darkened control room surveying the bank of flickering monitors in front of him. The agents at the terminals between him and the screens were all talking quickly and quietly into the microphones of their headsets as they worked to coordinate the activities of their men on the ground. Artemis Section’s snatch teams were probably the best in the world, hand selected by Flack from the cream of America’s black-ops teams. He was confident in their ability; all that he and the agents in this room needed to do now was give them a specific target.
“Think I’ve got something,” one of the analysts nearby said. Flack walked quickly over to her station.
“Show me,” he said.
“Here,” the analyst said, pointing at CCTV footage of four people walking down one of the streets leading away from St. Mark’s Square. It was extremely difficult to get the Italian intelligence services to give access to their security feeds, which was precisely why Flack hadn’t bothered asking. Fortunately, he didn’t just have the agency’s best field agents, he had their best hackers too.
“Well, that’s definitely Malpense and the woman from Phoenix,” Flack said, studying the image, “but who are the other two?”
The analyst fed the image of the girl’s face into the facial-recognition system. A hundred yards below them, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world began to process the image and compare it to the billions of images that were stored on its system. It broke the girl’s features down to simple mathematics, producing a geometrical identifier that was completely unique to her, searching its database for the most likely match. The entire process, that just a decade previously would have taken days or weeks of laborious searching and comparison by eye, took just a few seconds.
“Got her,” the analyst said, pulling up a separate window which showed a scan of a passport. “She’s Gretchen Metzer, German national, twenty-seven years old, graduated from the D-ARCH Faculty of Architecture in Switzerland, top of her class and then dropped off the grid completely until today.”
Flack frowned as another window opened up showing information that had automatically been collated from other systems across Europe.
“Odd,” Flack said, studying her file on the screen. “No parental records, no school records, nothing at all before she arrived at college. How exactly did she get into one of the most prestigious ar
chitectural schools in Europe without any apparent qualifications?”
“Want me to drill down a little further?” the analyst asked.
“Yes, but first let’s see who he is.” He tapped his finger on the image of the tall bald man standing next to Malpense. The analyst fed the image into the system again. A few seconds later a message flashed up onscreen:
CODE VB6
Flack raised an eyebrow. Code VB6 meant that the individual in question was flagged as a Person of Interest by MI6, but that there was no specific data on him in the CIA system. The Agency and their cousins across the water may have cooperated on many things, but there was still some information they didn’t share with anyone, even their closest allies. This was just such a person apparently. His frown deepened. He could put in a request for more information, but he suspected that it would get him nowhere and even if he was successful, it would take days. Hacking wasn’t an option. British Intelligence’s systems were too secure. For now the identity of this man would have to remain as an unanswered question.
“Okay, feed the images of these two new targets to the field team and see if we can find where they were going. The satellite imagery search algorithms should at least have more to work with now that we can add two more targets into the mix.”
Flack’s prediction was proven to be accurate just a minute later when one of the surveillance satellites that had been re-tasked to the area flagged up a potential match. Flack checked that the time-stamp on the imagery was correct and then studied the saved images. The four targets made their way to a private docking area and boarded a sleek black powerboat. He then tracked the boat’s progress as it made its way through the twisting canals before disappearing into what looked like a tunnel running under a group of buildings. He pushed the image and the location coordinates to the ground team controllers’ terminals.
“I want eyes on that tunnel,” Flack ordered. “I want to know where it leads and if there are any other exits.”
Within just a few minutes he had various images up on his screen. The maps of the tunnel system that Malpense had entered were confusing and contradictory. The perfect place to disappear.
“They could be anywhere in there,” one of the tactical controllers said. “We could search for a year and never find them.”
Flack studied the maps and after a few seconds highlighted a half-dozen locations.
“It may be hard to find someone in a maze,” Flack said, “but a maze only has so many exits. I want a blanket thrown over these areas. When they come back out, we’ll be waiting.”
Otto, Darkdoom, Raven, and Nathaniel took their places around the large mahogany table that occupied the center of the beautifully furnished dining room as Gretchen walked in carrying a steaming stewpot. She placed the pot in the center of the table and took a seat opposite Otto.
“So tell me, Diabolus,” Nathaniel said as he helped himself to a ladleful of the stew from the pot, “what is it exactly that you need to discuss with me so urgently?”
“I need your help to find someone,” Darkdoom replied, taking a sip from his glass of wine.
“I doubt that very much, Diabolus,” Nathaniel replied. “G.L.O.V.E. employs people who are far better suited to finding people than I am. Why aren’t you talking to them?”
“Because the person that we’re looking for is extremely good at covering their tracks and you may be the only person who knows where they’re hiding,” Darkdoom replied. “We’re looking for Anastasia Furan.”
Nathaniel froze, the spoonful of fish stew halfway to his mouth. He lowered the spoon and stared at Darkdoom, his eyes narrowing.
“That’s impossible,” Nathaniel said. “Furan is dead.”
“I’m afraid not,” Darkdoom said with a slight shake of the head. “She’s very much alive and responsible for recent heinous crimes against G.L.O.V.E. I know I don’t need to tell you what she’s capable of, Nathaniel. We need your help to find her and stop her.”
“I see,” Nathaniel replied, frowning, “but what I still don’t understand is why you think I can help you.”
“You can help by telling us where the training facility you built for her is located,” Darkdoom replied. “I know you live by a code of secrecy, Nathaniel, but she is responsible for the murder or kidnapping of dozens of Maximilian’s students and we fear that this is only the beginning.”
“I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed, Diabolus,” Nathaniel said. “I’ve never designed any facility for Furan, nor would I have done so if she had approached me. I am quite aware of how dangerous that woman is and even I would draw the line at working for someone like her. You should not confuse my neutrality with a lack of basic morality. Just because I don’t take sides doesn’t mean I’ll happily cooperate with psychopaths.”
“Then why did a senior member of her organization tell us that you did?” Raven demanded.
“I have absolutely no idea, my dear,” Nathaniel replied calmly. “I would assume, given your involvement, that the information was extracted from him under duress. One can rarely trust what one is told under such circumstances. I’m afraid that you may have been misinformed. Whoever designed and supervised the construction of this facility for Anastasia Furan, it was most certainly not me.”
“Oh, it was you all right,” Otto said calmly. “You just didn’t know it.”
“What on earth do you mean?” Nathaniel said, frowning at Otto.
“Do you want to tell him, Gretchen?” Otto asked. “Or should I?”
“What are you talking about?” Gretchen asked, looking slightly bewildered.
“What you may not have realized during our little boat trip earlier was that there were four of us and only three were unconscious,” Otto said, placing a silver metal ring on the table in front of him. A moment later a blue wireframe head materialized in the air above the ring.
“Gretchen, meet H.I.V.E.mind,” Otto said with a smile. “He’s an old friend of mine and he just happened to be listening in to the conversation you had while you were bringing us here. Perhaps you’d like to hear it?”
Otto nodded at H.I.V.E.mind.
“Commencing playback,” H.I.V.E.mind said calmly.
“They’re here,” the recording began, Gretchen’s voice unmistakeable. “Darkdoom, Raven, and Malpense. They’re all incapacitated—do you want me to terminate them?”
“No, we’ll wait until all the targets are together,” a voice replied with a slight crackle from what must have been a radio of some description. “The team is assembled. We’ll eliminate them and the Architect at the same time. He has become a liability.”
“Understood,” Gretchen replied. “I’ll activate the targeting beacon when they’re all in one place.”
“Which is exactly what you did,” Otto said, still smiling, “about two minutes ago. In fact, it’s in your jacket pocket right now. H.I.V.E.mind, could you just confirm who our friend here was talking to.”
“Voiceprint comparison with archive recordings confirms the other party as Furan, Anastasia,” H.I.V.E.mind replied.
Gretchen leaped to her feet and bolted for the dining room door, but Raven was on her in an instant, pinning her to the ground, a knife that seemed to appear from nowhere pressed to her throat. Nathaniel rose to his feet with a dark look in his eye as Raven dragged Gretchen back to her feet, twisting her arm behind her back viciously and making her gasp in pain.
“Two years,” Nathaniel said, “two years I’ve been training you as my apprentice and this is how you repay me. Why? What did Furan offer you?”
“Talk,” Raven said, wrenching Gretchen’s arm upward, “or I start breaking bones and that’s just the start.”
“You stupid old fool,” Gretchen hissed at Nathaniel through gritted teeth. “She didn’t have to offer me anything. I was working for her all along. You were just an assignment. Do you think it was an accident that we met? That I, the perfect apprentice, happened to come along just days after your former assistant died in a car crash?”
“It was you,” Nathaniel said, his voice little more than a whisper. “You killed Claudia so that you could take her place.”
“Furan needed you to build the new Glasshouse, but she knew you’d never cooperate if you knew what you were designing or who you were doing it for. So I concealed the true nature of the job. You never have paid enough attention to where the work comes from. That’s why you’ve always needed an assistant, someone you can trust to handle the clients. It was easy enough to hide the true nature of the facility, distracted as you were by the challenge that the job represented.”
“My God,” Nathaniel said quietly, “the Vault, you’re talking about the Vault.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Raven said. “Furan’s team will be here any second.” She reached into Gretchen’s pocket and pulled out the small gray cylinder of metal that she found inside.
“Give me that,” Otto said, “I have an idea.”
Raven handed the tracking beacon to Otto and he closed his eyes for a moment.
“Okay, let’s go,” Otto said a moment later, picking up H.I.V.E.mind’s holographic projector and slipping it into his pocket along with the tracking beacon.
“You’re bringing the tracker?” Darkdoom asked with a frown. “That doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea.”
“Trust me,” Otto said.
In the distance they could all suddenly hear the faint sound of helicopter rotors.
“Nathaniel,” Darkdoom said, “you should come with us, you heard what Furan said. She wants you dead. G.L.O.V.E. can protect you. It’s not taking sides, it’s self-preservation.”
Nathaniel looked at Darkdoom for a moment and then gave a small nod.
“And you’re coming with us,” Darkdoom said to Gretchen. “You and Natalya can have a nice long chat once we get out of here.”
“Looking forward to it already,” Raven said with a nasty smile.