Chapter 111

 

 

Emergency Room

Downtown Manhattan

 

10:53 p.m.

 

Calla kept a keen eye on the machine above Fiora’s hospital bed. Fiora’s breathing steadied, but she was still to show any real sign of alertness after as the drug attacked her bloodstream. A sudden buzzing from the bed side table alerted them.

“It’s her husband, Heres,” Jack said, inspecting the ringing phone.

He shook her shoulder slowly. “You need to answer it.”

Her eyes trundled in their sockets.

Heres couldn’t suspect anything. Jack raised the phone to her ear.

“Yes,” she said, then paused. “Where do I need to be?”

They exchanged a few more words before Fiora set the phone down.

“I leave in three hours. He won’t tell me where I’m supposed to go but I’m expected at the airport in an hour.”

“Then, we’ll be right behind you,” Nash said.

 

 

 

 

Normandy, France

 

Day 21

Sunday, July 27, 5:10 p.m.

 

The private plane touched down at Rennes Saint-Jacques Airport. A second plane leaned three minutes behind it.

Jack turned up the volume on the miniscule bugging device he’d place under the rim of Fiora’s stylish hat. “All right,” he said. “Fiora’s through immigration. She’s traveling alone, which is good. Except for one body guard.”

“We’re now going to the hotel and you need to change. Be ready in an hour.” They heard a voice say to Fiora.

They tailed the Mercedes limousine that took Fiora through the east of Brittany in northwestern France. Their Range Rover Velar made a steady approach toward Mont St. Michel, an island commune in Normandy located about close to a kilometer off France’s northwestern coast. The abbey island, a seat of the monastery, with its fickle tides, and a former notorious prison in the French Revolution, drew into form above the low village buildings.

A narrow causeway built in the 1880s had linked the island to the mainland, but, now, was spanned by a bridge. The Romanesque church of the abbey was daringly placed at the transept crossing on the top of the mount.

The July summer had drawn many coming to view the underground crypts and chapels built to compensate for the abbey’s weight and allure.

Their dark car curbed behind Fiora’s limousine as it decelerated at the entrance of an auberge, an inn facing Mont St. Michel several hundred yards from the pedestrian bridge that took one to the abbey island. Soon the car stopped at a central hotel facing the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.

Once Fiora’s driver pulled away, Jack checked his communication with her. Several minutes later, Jack rattled his knuckles on Fiora’s hotel room door. When she appeared at the crack of the door her eyes communicated she was alone. She dragged the door wide and Jack, followed by Calla and Nash, stepped into the room. Nash kept his hand on the door frame on the lookout.

“Fi, we need to pass Calla off as you,” Jack said.

“How will we do that?” she said.

“With this,” Jack said.

“This device will disguise Calla’s anatomy to pass off as yours,” said Tiege who’d accompanied them.

Fiora strode to the closet and pulled out a rubied gown. It was overtly jeweled for Calla’s taste. “You’ll wear this. Heres asked me to wear it, so they can spot me. I think it’ll fit.”

Calla changed swiftly and soon Tiege began the work on her anatomy change. Starting with a face mask, followed by a slight injection to the chin to absorb the mask. He engaged a facial animation component to her skin.

Jack made a move toward to Calla. “Please be careful,” he said.

Tiege let out a deep sigh, pleased with his work. “The animation wears off after a few hours and the mask can be pulled off. So he’s right, be careful”

She nodded.

“Here are the instructions for the auction,” Fiora said. “No cameras are allowed in the room,” she said with a crisp nod at Tiege’s masking accomplishment. “They’ll really think you’re me.”

 

They left Fiora’s room and headed down to hotel parking lot. Tiege took the wheel of the Range Rover and drove them up the foot bridge that connected to the island. He dropped them on a cobbled road, the only road leading in and out of the site, and led to the three-thronged paths to Norman Benedictine Abbey of St Michel. Clogged with meandering streets, the island was set against the convoluted architecture of the medieval town. On the approach road to the Mont they passed a small range of shops, restaurants and supermarkets.

There was only one way around, on foot. Calla hiked her dress hem so she could move with ease up the paved road to the two gates into the walled city. The Porte de l'Avancée, the main gate at the end of the causeway, led straight to the Grande Rue, saturated with souvenir shops and tourists. The men and Fiora would wait there at a terrace bar.

They escaped up a set of stairs to the ramparts, finding them less busy. The lesser-used gate, the Porte Eschaugette to their left of the main gate, was the quietest route up to the abbey and the one Calla had to set foot on in five minutes, right up to the abbey chapel.

 

They strode to an outdoor terrace bar overlooking the monastery. The street below, lined with half-timbered houses, had drawn in a fair share of night tourists and looked out onto the Grand Rue.

Jack handed Nash a beer from the bar and offered the women cool water and champagne. “You sure these are all the particulars, Calla needs?” Jack said looking at Fiora.

She nodded observing several guests making their way to the evening’s event outside the monastery. “Yes, I’m registered and only need to receive a face scan, which by the look of Tiege’s work will pass off nicely at security.”

Calla jerked at her dress, producing a grin on the men’s faces as she tried to embody Fiora’s persona.

 

 

“You ready?” Jack said.

Calla nodded, took a swig of Nash’s beer and began a steady march up the road to the monastery’s terrace where security scanned arriving guests.

Fiora eased into a bar stool next to Jack. She wore a hat with a veil to shield her face, her hair piled up underneath the hat. She sipped her champagne slowly. “I can’t stay long, Heres will be watching me.”

Her being down here was a risk and could cost them their cover. Her husband had eyes and ears everywhere. “You know you can leave him,” Jack said to her. “I can help you.”

“No, Jack, you can’t. No one can help me leave him.”

“So then why did you want to come down. What happened?”

“I may not be able to leave him but, Jack, you can stop him for me. You work for the government, don’t you? I’m not sure who you work for. But I’m sure you have access to important people.”

“What is it you need?” Nash said.

She wrapped her hands around her glass. “Jack, I stole something from him and he says I owe him a favor. If I don’t bid in this auction, I’m screwed. So you see your girl there has to deliver. Just out of curiosity, whose girl is she? Yours or Nash?”

Jack avoided the question. “What does Heres want in the auction?”

“A technology valued at two-hundred and fifty million. He won’t show his face in this black Internet auction, but has no trouble showing my face. He won’t admit he gambles with the secret group.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be over soon,” Nash said.

She glared up toward the monastery entrance. “That dress looks better on Calla, anyway.” She finished her water and set the glass on the table with a thump. “The way you both look at her, I certainly hope your girl has what it takes.”

 

 

 

 

Calla forced her steps one by one into the cordoned-off chapel inside the town walls. The place was war torn yet full of life. It had been closed off for the private event. This time only a handful of participants had been invited within the monument of pre-Roman architecture. Calla approached and the guard scanned her on a facial recognition device. Soon guests headed toward the Merveille, a former monk living area with its gothic front signaling them to enter. Calla observed at her counterparts unable to recognize any. Few spoke. Most just nodded cordial gestures as they entered the East side where three rooms stood. A chaplaincy, a host room and an arched eating hall. The guests then made their way past the knights’ rooms and cloister, into the dining space.

“Fiora Benassi? Your seat is number three at the table.”

A round table had been set up in the middle of the chapel. Seven men and three women, that could have represented a United Nations gathering, strolled into the room each checked off at the gate and they positioned themselves behind a virtual reality terminal.

After Nash’s experience with the VR head gear, she was ready for anything. The goggles alone could numb her senses and confuse her. But she was ready.

The device Calla had been given to maneuver the auction beeped. A head set dropped from the ceiling. She placed the goggles over her head and set the earpieces in place.

A voice came online as she was transferred to another reality.

 

The technology took her to a multi-projected environment that generated realistic images stimulating her presence in to an illusory world.

A restaurant setting in what looked like Kyoto, Japan. Momentarily, a jovial character appeared in front of her. A man in a fabulous tuxedo suit. “Welcome.”

Calla gawked down at her dress, now a geisha outfit.

“Follow me to the auction,” said the character extending a salute.

In the VR environment, her journey took her to a combat field of historic Japanese armies from the last century and then zeroed in back to civilization. The image changed and she lost sense of the people around her.

Several men and other geishas poured into her world.

The auction began. Calla knew they were at an auction, but was it real or was a seventh sense throwing her off.

She tapped her ear piece to make sure she could communicate with Nash and Jack. They were auctioning off soldiers. Electronic soldiers to be exact her mind told her. But here in her other reality they looked like Japanese Samurai armies. Would the winner walk off with the artificial intelligence army? She knew many governments wanted to weaponize artificial intelligence. Was this what Fiora’s husband wanted her to steal?

The auction proceeded with several geishas and their escorts managing bids. But Calla couldn’t see the exact amount. The only control she had in the environment was her bid.

She keyed in 2 billion Euros. One by one the auction went on until it was just Calla and one other.

She held her breath at the last bid.

Four billion Euros.

She entered the amount.

It didn’t register.

Nash’s voice came on in her head.

She’d been outbid.

Someone was about to walk off with AI technology that had no business going onto the open market or in the hands of random billionaires. She was out of her league haggling and felt a bead of sweat down trickle down her neck.

Her heart leaped to her throat and she felt a suffocation like she’d never experienced.

The sensation stung and her pulse began to race. A lightening blow landed on her cheek.

And then darkness.

 

Calla ripped the goggles off her eyes. She threw her hand to her throat gasping for air. What had happened? Obscurity surrounded her and she took in the strong tang of limestone in the air. Sprawled on the moist ground she examined her surroundings. A steady stream of water rushed down over rocks and a faint wind whistled through the breeches in the stone.

Her hand crawled to the foot of her dress. Fiora’s dress.

She’d left her cellphone with Nash. The earpiece that had been attached to the back of her dress had been torn out of the ear.

Her mask had been ripped off.

What had happened?

Cool water dripped down past her evening shoes signaling she was no longer in the chapel, but inside Mont St. Michel’s meandering maze of crypt tunnels.