Chapter 13

“Get out and unlock the chain,” Sten Gustafsson-Jeglum said as he shifted into neutral and set his foot on the brake. “Combination is two, twenty-eight, thirteen.”

Matthieu Letermé looked down the long drive that stretched out before them, then opened the door and stepped down from the van. An old Vauxhall Vivero diesel, decent mileage but man, did the exhaust stink. At the far end of the long drive was a large structure that looked as if it had been cobbled together over the centuries from brick, stone, tile, and hand-hewn timbers. Shutters were closed tightly over all the windows, and he could see a jungle of roses and forsythia and ivy that had not been pruned in a very long time.

He walked over to a stone pillar at the side of the unpaved lane and fiddled with the lock on the chain that stretched across the drive to an identical stone pillar. He thumbed in the combination and lowered the chain to the ground. After Sten drove over it, Letermé raised it again and refastened the lock, then climbed back into the passenger seat.

“Whose place is this?” he asked as the Swede shifted into gear and drove the vehicle up the dirt road lined with mature beech trees on either side.

Sten didn’t answer right away, just pulled up in front of the sprawling house and cut the engine. The two men sat there for a moment before he opened his door and stepped down to the gravel parking area that was littered with weeds and leaves left over from last autumn. He stretched his arms and rotated his shoulders, loosening his muscles after the long drive from Brussels.

“It’s owned by a friend of a friend,” he explained, without explaining much. A small lie, in fact, since the shuttered chateau had been in his father’s family for over a century, and had belonged to his parents until they had been killed in a terrorist act over ten years ago. As their only child, Sten had inherited a fortune that was far too vast for a young man to manage properly, and thus he’d let the property slip into disrepair. Not the equities and bonds and other financial assets, however; those he’d been quite fastidious about. “C’mon—let’s unload this stuff and get to work.”

Letermé got out and followed him to the rear of the van, once more assessing the large structure as he shook road cramps from his legs. The front of the building towered three stories above the ground, and a steeply pitched tile roof with four sets of dormer windows—also covered with shutters—rose up another floor above that. A large field sloped away from the front of the chateau several hundred meters down to a line of trees and a crumbling stone wall, and several outbuildings in various states of disrepair were set off to one side of an old pear orchard.

“This friend of yours…have I met him?” he inquired again as Sten unlocked the rear doors and swung them open. “Or her?”

“The less you know, the better,” he replied as he tugged a large cardboard box toward him. “Let’s just say it’s a safe place to set up shop for a while.”

Sten could be like that, evasive but direct at the same time, and Letermé had learned shortly after they had met two years ago at a computer conference in Cologne not to press him.

“Where do we put this stuff?” he asked, picking up a box of servers and trailing behind him to the front portico.

Sten set down his carton and unlocked a large wooden door that swung inward on ancient iron hinges. “Follow me,” he said.

The rugged, hard-carved slab opened into an entryway that held a pair of unmatched chairs and a small table. Slivers of light angled in through the ancient shutters, and Letermé could see the walls were bare except for picture hooks hammered into the plaster that at one time probably displayed artwork but now served no purpose.

“We’ll open the shutters after we get the equipment upstairs,” Sten said as he flicked a switch that instantly bathed the room with a soft luminescence. “This way.”

Letermé followed him through a door, which led into another room that was equally spartan in its decorating, and then through yet another. Beyond that was a rickety staircase that most likely served as the servants’ upstairs access at some point in the history of this house. Sten punched another light switch and they trudged up to the second floor, then turned right and found another flight that took them to a landing on the third level. Three doors opened off the right side, and an oak door was at the far end. Next to it, a metal device was set into the wall, a single LED glowing bright red.

“I’m already lost,” Letermé said.

“Just give me a second to deactivate the locks.”

Sten set his box of hardware on the wide-board floor and touched his thumb to a small pad. He waited a moment while the light changed from red to a steady green, then slid a card into a slot while simultaneously punching in a six-digit code on a small keypad. There was a brief hum, followed by a chime of five steady notes that sounded like someone tapping a knife on the edge of a glass.

“We’re in,” he said as he retrieved his box.

What lay beyond was a vast contrast to the rest of the bare, dimly lit house. The room was about twenty feet square, and every inch of wall space was occupied with floor-to-ceiling racks of computer equipment—mostly servers, power units, and switchers. A dozen large wall-mounted screens appeared to be running a steady stream of code, and in the middle of the room a large table held keyboards, drives, smaller monitors, and other assorted hardware.

“What is this place?” Letermé asked, massaging his temples and cursing all the beer he had consumed the night before.

“Ce, mon ami, est la Maison de Quantum,” Sten said, a noticeable touch of pride in his voice. He unloaded the box he had brought up from the van and arranged the pieces of equipment in one of the few vacant spaces on the table. “Quantum House. Otherwise known as ‘ground zero’ to the governments that are trying to shut us down.”

“Then it does exist,” Letermé said, reverence and awe in his voice. “In an empty chateau in…well, wherever the hell we are.”

“As the Americans would say, ‘an undisclosed location.’ Fortunately, you were so hung over you slept most of the way down here.”

“These are the central servers?”

“The heart of the TruthCorps cloud,” Sten confirmed with pride.

“This explains why no one has been able to shut us down—”

“Bring ‘em on,” Sten replied with a Mona Lisa grin.

Letermé nodded as he looked around the room. “How do you keep it all off the grid?”

“Solar panels on the south facing roof, and hydrogen cells in the basement, with tandem back-up propane-fired generators.”

“What about connectivity? You can’t be going through Big Orange out here.”

Sten shook his head, said, “Independent satellite connection, with direct upload and download capabilities provided by a very generous benefactor.” In other words, the Gustafsson-Jeglum family trust.

“I feel privileged,” Matthieu said, only halfway sarcastic. “How do you know we weren’t followed down here from Brussels?”

“We were,” Sten told him. “I lost the bastards in Lille, after we crossed the border. You were sleeping.”

“And you’re certain they didn’t pick us up again after that?”

“They met with some temporary misfortune, and after that they were in no condition to continue on,” Sten assured him with a wry grin. “Come, let’s go get the rest of the stuff.”

Nataliya Moisei reveled in opulence, and all the crazy extravagance that went with it. Hers was an abundant world encrusted with diamonds and rubies and emeralds, celebrated with lavish quantities of Cristal champagne served in hand-cut Waterford flutes. It was relaxing in the sumptuous comfort of a private jet, flying to private resorts in the Seychelles and Bali and Thailand. Racing a Bugatti Chiron along the winding roads of the French Riviera, sipping Nolet’s gin martinis on the aft deck of a private Amels yacht in Monaco. It was glamping on a private safari in Botswana with a red-haired prince from a European island nation who, alas, went and got married to an American actress whom her high-brow in-laws seemed to despise.

The former prostitute from Moldova had experienced all these things, at one time or another, mostly when she was much younger than her current forty-two years, although many of those years had treated her very kindly. She was the same weight, same measurements as when she was first turned out at age sixteen, and the few signs of age that had begun to appear had thus far been buffed out or enhanced by surgery. These days her hair was dark, done up in a French braid even though this was Rome. Her corrective lenses were a cornflower blue, a new color she believed made appear look five years younger.

This morning she had awakened in her suite at the Grand Hotel Palace on a fashionable block of Via Veneto, luxuriating in the high-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets before treating herself to a bubble bath enhanced with eucalyptus-mint Epsom salts. She experienced both these things alone, an occurrence that was happening more and more these days, and which didn’t bother her nearly as much as it would have in the past. Perhaps she would treat herself to a massage and a manicure later, if things went well.

This afternoon she was seated at a small table in the shade of a sycamore, in a secluded garden patio of a restaurant on Via Ludovisi, with white linens, blue napkins, a single rose in a crystal vase. There was no prosecco, however, since this was a work lunch and she had learned long ago not to imbibe alcohol while conducting business.

The man seated across from her seemed out of place…was out of place. She knew him only as Alberto, and he claimed to be from Athens, although she knew for a fact he was an Albanian. No matter; he was tall, dark, and handsome—a pleasing but clichéd combination that had always worked for her in the past. They had never slept together—a distinct complication in her constantly evolving line of work—but she had thoroughly fantasized about it more than once.

It would not be so today; today she had an emergency request, brought on by a particularly nasty incident no one—not even she—could have foreseen.

“What happened to the other girl?” Alberto asked, after she’d told him what she needed.

“That is none of your concern,” Nataliya replied. “Can you help me or not?”

Alberto tasted a sip of Lambrusco, clearly not sharing Natalie’s rules for drinking when business was being discussed. “Of course,” he said with a deferential nod. “This new untouched flower, as you put it…when do you need her?”

“Tomorrow,” she replied. “At the latest.”

“Short notice.”

“That’s why I came to you.”

He could have considered her words a form of flattery, but he knew she would say—do—just about anything to get what she needed. “Same as before, I presume?”

“Yes. Pretty and innocent, of course. Fair, preferably blonde hair. Blue or brown eyes, doesn’t really matter. American would be good, French or German as well.”

“Not British?”

“In a pinch, if you must.”

Alberto nodded as she spoke, committing her specs to memory. “Does language matter?” he asked.

Nataliya raised a single eyebrow, as if that were a stupid question. “No one’s expecting her to say much,” she replied.

“What about age?”

“Fourteen or fifteen. Just like the last one.”

He considered all that she had told him, then said, “Fifty grand. Wire transfer, no crypto.”

“That’s double last time.”

“Last time you gave me a week.”

They both smiled, neither for the same reason. Fifty thousand dollars was more than Alberto had ever earned for one job. But he was right: this was a last-minute thing, and well worth the price. Plus, it was a drop in the bucket for Nataliya’s employer, particularly considering what the sick bastard had in mind for the naïve young thing.

“Deal,” she said. “But there’s one more thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Make sure this one isn’t the type to go and kill herself. You do not want to go up against the wrath of the Russian.”

“Wait…what—?”

“See you tomorrow night,” Nataliya said with a tight grin. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Alberto froze for a moment, his eyes shaken by a sudden fear that seemed to tighten around his heart. “No worries, signora. Same place as before?”

“See you there.”

She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and he hurriedly downed the rest of his sparkling wine. Then he rose to his feet and, with a bow of his head, slipped out of the restaurant.

Her business concluded, she glanced around the patio, caught the attention of the server and motioned him over to her table. “Prosecco,” she said with a smile. Such sweet, green eyes he had, and an athletic, young body she could just melt herself into, given half the chance.