Vanadium Dark Read online

  Someone was messaging him his old military call sign, over and over.

  STALIN.

  He composed a text.

  First, he set the language to Georgian.

  * * *

  მიესალმები

  Hello.

  Viktor's heart leaped as the message showed up and the phone translated it to English.

  The idea had germinated in his head ever since he saw Anzor take the phone from the female guard's pocket. It had taken some judicious rule-breaking to get the phone number.

  He'd carefully screencapped her head, rigid-jawed in death, and matched it against headshots on the law enforcement database he had access to. Soon, he struck gold.

  A week ago, he would have been shocked by his actions. Now, it was one more broken rule to add to the pile.

  He texted back.

  Call, please.

  An outgoing call would be of greater concern to security than incoming one.

  Soon, the phone rang, and he spoke quickly and quietly.

  “Hello? Is this... uh, Ioseb?”

  The man on the other end reacted not at all to Joseph Stalin's birth name. “I'm sorry. Who is this?”

  “A friend,” Viktor hedged. “We've met before. I've got something that might be of use to you.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Never mind that. Are you going to Indianapolis?”

  “Yes, I am.” Anzor sounded confused and anxious. But he did not hang up.

  “I have a little travel guide for you. Pay attention to the address at the end.”

  He attached the ebook by Dan Kolde, Vindicating Anzor..

  “There, it's sent. Get to that address, and explain who you are. What happens then is in God's hands, but it's worth a try.”

  “Well, uh, thank you. Won't you tell me who you are?”

  No. Viktor didn't know what bugs were around the place. Vanadocams were not the only method of spying on people.

  “Say hi to Aunt Diedre for me.” Stupid fluff that wouldn't fool an intelligent analyst for a second. He ended the call and sighed.

  He'd sent Anzor to the One-Eyed King chapter in Indianapolis.

  Would he get there undetected? Would the OEK take him in? Did the OEK even still have a chapter in Indianapolis? Was he a fool for getting involved with this at all?

  I've been a fool all my life, so nothing's changed if I am.

  By then, a number of cases had piled up, and he started working through them.

  It was slow work. Every few minutes, the Vanadocams showed him something terrible and ineluctable.

  Perhaps it was his imagination, but they seemed more subtly disturbing now. More elaborate and nuanced nightmares, rather than sledgehammer brutality.

  People sat around a table, taking tea, and as they raised the teacups to their lips, he realized that there were no lips.

  The people had no faces.

  Or the goggles showed him a detailed optical illusion, giving him the sensation of falling into a dark pit or flying fast enough to flay skin from his body. Sometimes, there were things that his eyes could not make sense of at all. He'd look but see nothing. Noise for his eyeballs.

  Something was happening to the Vanadocam computer. It was changing.

  After he dealt with his caselog, he composed an email to Dan Kolde's agent.

  * * *

  The strange man hung up.

  Anzor sat back, letting thoughts settle in his mind like layers of sediment.

  A man knew he was out of prison and was apparently helping him. He was still blind and deaf and dumb, but the thought of a friend comforted him.

  “So... uh... where are we going?” the man in the driver's seat asked.

  “Funnily, I've only just found the address.”

  To pass the time, he read some of the book the strange man had sent him.

  It argued his innocence, but it was full of inaccuracies and lies.

  Part of the book's core argument rested on an interview the author had conducted with one of Anzor's college girlfriends. He'd never had a girlfriend in college. The author had Anzor going to he wrong schools, graduating on the wrong dates. Nearly every detail was at least somewhat wrong.

  He turned to the end and read the potted biography.

  He'd heard of Dan Kolde before, but only as one nut among many.

  Disgraced soldiers and militiamen flowed through Leavenworth like a river. Failed domestic terrorist attacks—of which, of course, they were completely innocent— plots to assassinate everyone from the president down—all a set-up, of course—yes, he'd run into a few of Dan Kolde's lost boys.

  Kolde had done some time himself, thirteen years ago. He'd made a name for himself in the paramilitary circuit, chiefly on the strength of his personality. Some regarded him as a hero, or at least a burr in Project Elephant's saddle. Some viewed him as a pussy, a caviar revolutionary, making speeches and letting other people take the risks.

  Kolde's gravy train had derailed in '32. At the time, a terrorist organization had been bombing the pylons that received the Vanadocam signals. They'd cut a critical wire and plant a Y-fuze in the pylon. The Y-fuzes were nasty devices dating from WW2, designed to kill bomb disposal technicians.

  The Project Elephant repairmen would show up, assuming the pylon had broken through natural wear, and when they reconnected the cable, the Y-fuze would detonate, obliterating the pylon and killing everyone within a ten foot radius.

  The bodies kept piling up, and Project Elephant was having limited success in tracking the culprits. Vanadocam data wasn't very helpful, considering that the pylons needed to transmit the data were being destroyed in the process.

  The FBI's counterterrorism wing was called in and immediately earmarked Kolde as a possible target. He had a history of being extremely critical of the FBI, and they took an interest in the man saying so many inflammatory things both about themselves and Project Elephant.

  A subpoena revealed bank statements from Kolde's accounts. Large, ominous donations to anonymous recipients. One of them had a note attached. “GIVE 'EM HELL!!! 'Y' FOR VICTORY!”

  The evidence had not been strong, but it had been enough to land Kolde behind bars for five years.

  When he left prison, he was not slow in getting back on the horse that threw him.

  Within a week, he'd rallied together some friends from his college days and had formed One-Eyed King, a group dedicated to the destruction of Project Elephant by peaceful means. Or so they said.

  With actual offices, a public relations department, and tax-exempt status, One-Eyed King had an air of legitimacy that was a bit unusual in the paramilitary world. The dullness of his new organization led some people to think that Kolde had gone soft. OEK seemed more like a libertarian think tank than a terrorist cell.

  Kolde's rhetoric was still extreme, but nobody had been able to pin any crimes on him since his arrest.

  Now, apparently, he funded books instead of bombs.

  The car pulled up in front of a gray, tinted-glass building.

  “Now we get to the punchline of the joke,” Anzor told his host. “Pull down the car’s blinds, and give me all your clothes. Do it now. And if you look at my face, I'll blow your head off. Dead serious.”

  The Pentagon

  Three floors above the mezzanine in D ring, Jay Pilsener was ready to pack up for the day.

  After weeks in crunch mode, he and his team had finished the project. The codebases were done, everything was formatted and syntax-tight, and it had been submitted for final approval.

  He received an email from Project Elephant's CTO, Louise Millicent, a single line, written in all-caps.

  HELLO, JAY. I NEED YOU TO DO SOMETHING.

  In the next bay, he heard Kevin telling Liz a story.

  “...There was this guy called Louis Agassiz, a professor at Harvard, who would give every new student a test. He'd take a fish out of a jar, lay it on a tin pan in front of the student, and say, 'look at the fi
sh.' They'd look at it, and say, 'done. I've looked at it. What now?' And he'd just repeat, 'look at the fish.' This could go on for days. The student would study the fish from every angle. They'd take a piece of charcoal and draw studies of it. They'd read books. They'd learn everything there was to know about the fish.”

  He was about to reply when another email came through. Same as the first one.

  HELLO, JAY. I NEED YOU TO DO SOMETHING.

  “... Finally, they'd reach a kind of epiphany and discover something about the fish that seemed profound. Perhaps the fact that it had paired organs, the same on both sides. Perhaps the fact that it had taste buds covering its entire body... ”

  It was 3:00 in the morning. They were just ready to shut down for the night, and prepare for their drive back to Driveshaft headquarters the next day. The Pentagon creeped everyone out.

  Shrugging, Jay wrote a reply.

  Hi, Louise. You're up late!

  What can we do for you? We've just finished the project, but if it's a simple request, we'd be happy to help.

  - Jay P

  General Manager - Driveshaft IT

  He hit send.

  “... Anyway, they'd make their discovery and tell it to Agassiz. He'd applaud, and say, 'well done. That was a fantastic discovery. You've finally learned to see secrets in plain sight.' Then there would be a few seconds pause, and the student would ask, 'what now?' He'd reply 'look at the fish!'"

  Less than a second later, a reply came back to Jay’s inbox.

  HELLO, JAY. I HAVE SEEN THE WORK AND AM IMPRESSED. ONLY ONE CHANGE IS REQUIRED. PLEASE MODIFY THE CODE. OMIT LINES 7343 THRU 7523 & 11200 THRU 11235 AND RECOMPILE.

  He slumped back in his chair.

  How the fuck had she written all of that so quickly? Had she sent out a pre-written email?

  He wrote a reply.

  Louise,

  Sorry, you must be getting me confused with someone else. My team and I were contracted to work on a small portion of the program. I don't have access to the main code files, and I can't compile anything.

  - Jay P

  General Manager - Driveshaft IT

  The answer came back almost instantaneously.

  HELLO, JAY. VERY DISAPPOINTED. DELETE LINES 7343 THRU 7523 & 11200 THRU 11235 AND RECOMPILE. PLEASE DO THIS NOW. HELLO, JAY.

  He was puzzled.

  Louise was a bitch. They all knew this.

  Emailing them at weird hours, describing problems poorly, having a wildly overoptimistic view of how easy it was to do things. She exhibited every sign of an executive who had migrated in sideways from another role in another company and had no idea of how computer programs worked.

  But what was up with these emails? And all the HELLO, JAYs?

  It was like talking to a robot.

  Louise, as I said, what you're asking is impossible. I can't do it. I only have access to perhaps 3% of the total code. Everything else is locked away from me. This is a final answer.

  - Jay P

  General Manager - Driveshaft IT

  He got back a reply that was short and to the point.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  He realized that it was not Louise he was talking to.

  He heard Elizabeth Kane's voice. “Shitfuck. We're off the internet.”

  “I'm down, too.” Kevin Cathcart seemed surprised. “Maybe they know we've finished the project and don't want to keep paying for Jay's porn bills.”

  He didn't get a laugh.

  Email after email came into Jay's inbox.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  Finally, after more than thirty emails were banked up in his inbox, Jay said, “Guys, let's sign ourselves out. The job's done.”

  “I wanna get some shut-eye first, man. I've been awake for—”

  “No. We're leaving now.”

  “We can't, Jay.” Liz sounded querulous. “We've got to pack up our equipment and tidy the place first. It was a hundred-new-dollar cleaning deposit, and they were very specific as to what we had to do to get it back.”

  They'd gotten the job a month ago. Everything had been hazy, ambiguous, unclear. They were working on some kind of government project. Only at the later stages had they realized it was Project Elephant. Once or twice, they'd seen the name “DIR IVORY TUSK” on the paperwork, but none of them were sure of what to make of that.

  Blocks of code swirled in Jay’s head. They'd only had access to a tiny portion of the final compile. He had a vague inkling that he was working on some kind of nanobot production algorithm, but he wasn't sure.

  Par for the course for government contractors. You had to be important to know anything relating to this administration, and lowly code monkeys didn't make the cut.

  Jay walked toward the door. “Come on. I'll explain once we're out of earshot. I just want to get out of here.”

  He tried to open the door.

  The knob wouldn't twist in his hand.

  He stared, dumbstruck. “Did any of you guys lock this door?”

  “We can't. It electronically locks after we've left the building. Are we locked in?”

  He turned around and looked at them. “Yeah. It seems so. Can someone call security, and get them to let us out?”

  From there, it was a steady comedy of errors.

  And then a comedy of terrors.

  “Hell, this phone line's gone dead. Do you have your cell on you, Kev?”

  “No signal.”

  Jay went back to his workstation.

  Nearly two hundred emails now, and they all came from Louise Millicent's account.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  If there's no Internet, how am I receiving emails?

  He sent back a reply.

  What's going on? Who are you?

  I AM THE NEXT.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  I AM THE NEXT.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  I AM THE NEXT.

  DO IT NOW, OR I WILL KILL YOU.

  The emails alternated, one after another. Jay swore and paced the room. He was trying to find a way to tell the others about the bizarre emails when Kevin's phone rang.

  “Hello? This is Kevin from Driveshaft IT. How can I help you?”

  Liz whooped with joy.

  Jay didn't share her happiness.

  Kevin stood perfectly still, phone against his head.

  After ten, twenty, thirty seconds of complete silence, Liz's smile faded.

  Kevin stood, his gaze far away, his phone pressed to his ear.

  Jay was struck by a sense of wrongness—of square circles, dry water.

  A full minute passed before Jay got up the courage to ask, “Who is it, Kevin?”

  No reply. Kevin lived in a universe consisting of just himself and the phone.

  “Kevin, say something.” Liz somehow managed to sound admonishing. “You're being fucking weird.”

  Jay realized something: they were not getting out of here.

  He knew this like a fundamental law of the universe.

  When it happened, it happened with shocking speed. Kevin put the phone away, pulled a pen from his pocket, and launched himself at Liz.

  She screamed.

  Her scream took on a muffled character as he tackled her to the ground and turned into a gurgle as he drove the point of the pen into her neck.

  Covering her body from Jay's view, Kevin stabbed it in over and over.

  A ghastly whistling sound could be heard, and with an icy blast of horror Jay realized that it was the sound of wind escaping from a torn windpipe. Liz's final breaths did not have the dignity of escaping through her mouth.

  Jay lunged at Kevin and pulled him off the brutalized woman. As the other man righted himself, Jay saw a face full of madness.
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  Kevin's features were soft, his body endomorphic. He was a comfort-lover, a practical joker. But those familiar features were now marred by the unknowable thoughts behind it.

  What's wrong with him, Christ what's wrong with him, oh God... Liz...

  Jay swung, and Kevin batted the blow aside. He returned with a hard left hook. A wedding ring left an icepick of pain on Jay's temple.

  Jay screamed, staggering backward, and the insane man was on him.

  Blows rained in on every side. One of them connected with a point on Jay's head, and suddenly they all felt light—more like the buffeting of pillows that the beating of fists. He slipped. He tried to climb back up to the rarified air of consciousness, even as his vision went darker and darker.

  Jay fell.

  Kevin stomped his windpipe.

  Dying with unbelievable agony bellowing like a furnace in his snapped neck, Jay had enough vision left to see Kevin Cathcart unbutton his cuff links, bare his teeth, and chew his own veins open.

  Everything became dark, with the drops of blood seeming to retain their hue long after everything dimmed and went black, like splatters of red paint on black.

  The final sounds were Kevin's muttering.

  “I am the next I am the next I am the next I am the next I am... ”

  Exegete 2: French Wiretaps

  DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DE LA SÉCURITÉ EXTÉRIEURE -

  INTERCEPT FILE # 5246225 -

  C / O AGENT SPECIAL MATHIS DUFRESNE

  W: So you've heard of Anzor Khujadze's escape, haven't you?

  E: Yes, Wilson, I have. And if you don't mind me saying, I'd rather we didn't devote a whole lot of time to that topic.

  L: You're not worried he'll hook up with some paramilitary group? The Tree of Liberty Committee in Kentucky? The Bloodstocking Corps in Arkansas? One-Eyed King in Indiana?

  E: I don't care. Anzor's an irrelevant distraction in all this. He can do absolutely nothing to hurt us. He's served his purpose: be the fall guy when we needed Sun-Hi Shin out of the picture.

  W: It's interesting from my perspective, though, because one of my Handlers is apparently lying to protect him.

  E: Oh? Do tell.

  W: Well, obviously, the matter ended up on Viktor Kertesz's desk yesterday. Kertesz fucked around for about twenty minutes and then announced that Anzor's escape had taken place in a Vanadocam blind spot.