a perfect copy of the small memory stick, encryption and all.
“Got it.”
“So what does it say?” Konstantin asked.
Lethe had been so focused on the screen he had forgotten the Russian was on the line. “No idea, but I’ll find out.”
“Do you need anything else from me?”
Just give me two seconds,” Lethe said, punching in the command that would erase the memory stick. Most people didn’t realize that erasing something on a computer was pretty much the same as using an eraser on a block of legal paper: you could pull off the top sheet and use the edge of the pencil to highlight the impression left on the page beneath. Or, in other words, deleting a document didn’t take it away. Not if you knew how to go snooping through digital files. Of course if Lethe wanted something gone, he could make it happen. He had designed his own data shredder. It wasn’t perfect, but without the restructuring code he didn’t believe there was a programmer in the world who could put Humpty together again.
To finish the job he uploaded a virulent piece of code that would inflict a whole world of hurt on the first machine that tried to unravel it. It was his parting gift.
“Okay,” he muttered, “it’s all rs, Koni.” He didn’t tell the Russian the drive in his pocket was now worse than useless. He figured it was better for the big man to think he was protecting untold secrets in case someone over there picked him up. The less he knew the better. Lethe’s grin was fierce as he kicked the chair back. It twisted slightly as it glided on its small wheels. He killed the connection and pulled the Bluetooth set out of his ear.
The room was floor to ceiling with server racks and drives, ribbon connectors, USBs, and trailing wires that seemed to have fused together into some sort of grotesque Transformer.
Lethe reached over for the remote and cranked up the volume on his iPod. It was hooked into an expensive speaker rig. Even at quarter volume the speakers had enough power to deafen every living thing within one hundred yards of Nonesuch. Musically, Jude Lethe was born out of his time. The jazz refrain of Hue and Cry’s “I Refuse” faded into Stuart Adamson’s powerful Dunfermline burr as it came up screaming “In a Big Country.” The entire playlist was all mid-80s but avoided nerve-jarring pop jingles and focused on iconic tunes like “Love is a Wonderful Color” and “Sixty Eight Guns.” These were the songs that defined a generation.
He cracked his knuckles and stretched back in the chair, enjoying the dead singer’s voice as he sounded his battle cry. He leaned across for the alarm clock on the shelf above the computer, checked it against his watch, and set it for forty-five minutes time to make things interesting. He put the clock back on the shelf and turned his full attention back to the screen.
Lethe triggered a string of commands, his fingers moving with staccato-grace across the keyboard. Without knowing anything about the woman who had built the encryption he was running in an algorithmic darkness like a blind mouse.
That was just how he liked it.
It didn’t take him anywhere near the full forty-five minutes to unlock the cloned disc. The encryption wasn’t meant to deter a stubborn investigator, only to put off prying eyes.
The woman’s codename was Ghost Walker. Her real name was Grace Weller. All of the documents were signed GW. There was enough information hardcoded into the file system for Lethe to know as much about the woman as her own mother by the time he’d finished digging. Even his cursory scan revealed enough for him to know Grace was anything but an unfortunate girlfriend in the wrong place at the wrong time. Asar as Lethe could tell she’d engineered herself into exactly where she wanted to be. Her machine was registered as property of Her Majesty’s Government, which meant she was almost certainly with MI6. The fact that the tech boys still insisted on properly registering their bulk licenses for various software was mildly amusing. There had been a time back in the ’90s where the core government offices developed their own database, accounting and word processing software rather than buy in services. Now, like the rest of the known world, they paid the Great God Microsoft a small fortune for the privilege of keeping the nation’s secrets electronically.
Given the extent of the dossier Grace had assembled on Grey Metzger, Lethe figured he was what Six liked to call a “person of interest.” That was a euphemism for prime suspect for something or other. In this case Lethe had no idea what for, but the answer was almost certainly buried within the hundreds of pages of words and numbers he’d just unlocked. He’d find it. It was what he did. The others might flex their muscles and work up a sweat playing soldiers, but what happened in this little room beneath Nonesuch was every bit as vital as all of the running about and fighting that went on up there in the “real world.”
Judging by the creation dates of the various files, Grace had been working Metzger for the best part of three years.
Lethe sat back in his chair, processing what, exactly, that little nugget of information meant in terms of the big picture. He thought of life as a huge, multi-million-piece mosaic, each tile offering an action, a reaction, an interaction, a person, a place, an event, and it wasn’t until all of the tiles were laid down that this thing called life began to make sense. He figured that the whole life flashing before your eyes at the end really just meant for once you could see the entire mosaic instead of just those few tiles closest to you.
That Grace Weller had been following Metzger for three years meant one thing in terms of the big picture-for three years Metzger had been doing something worth watching.
Lethe browsed quickly through the files, scanning for key words that caught his eye. They were surveillance reports on Grey Metzger, logging his movements for almost two and a half years. There were hundreds of low-res and high-res photos taken in smoky bars, lecture halls, beside national monuments, at digs, in cafes and restaurants, shaking hands, kissing, hugging. What he wasn’t doing was trading any suspiciously wrapped packages or meeting men with briefcases on park benches while the fog set in. It was a life in pictures. Metzger’s life, to be precise. It looked decidedly normal.
There was a comprehensive journal that covered everything from contact lists, emails, phone numbers, and logs of phone calls in and out. Grace had shadowed his life with a thoroughness that bordered on the obsessive.
And then, seven months ago they made contact.
It was all there in her report.
She had seduced Metzger, ingratiating herself into his world.
They had become lovers.
There was something incredibly cold about the way she reported it all, like there was no emotion in any of it. Getting close to Metzger was a job, and she was determined to do it to the best of her ability. Lethe wondered what it would be like to live your life that way, disassociated from even the most intimate of things, reducing everything to assignments and lies.
Looking at the paperwork, she had moved in with Metzger three months ago-four months after first contact- but her surveillance hadn’t stopped. If anything it had become even more detailed. Midway through the autumn she had noted her fears that Metzger was involved with someone she called Mabus.
There was something familiar about the name. Lethe stared at the screen. “Mabus,” he said, tasting the sound of it on his tongue. He’d heard it before. He didn’t know where, but he’d definitely heard it before. He said it again and a third time as if it might be a charm. It was. He hadn’t heard the name before, he’d seen it. And he knew exactly where.
Mabus was the name Nostradamus had given the third Antichrist. Napoleon, Hitler and finally Mabus. He switched screens and ran a search for Mabus, cross-referencing it against Nostradamus. The results were pretty much what he had expected, page after page of theories, conspiracy and crackpot, about the rise of the Antichrist, the Mabus Code, the Mabus comet and so much other stuff and nonsense.
Lethe read the original quatrain, Century 2, Quatrain 62:
Mabus will soon die, then will come
A horrible undoing of people and animals
At once one will see vengeance, one hundred powers, thirst,
Famine, when the comet will pass.
It wasn’t exactly damning stuff-comets, the undoing of animals, powers thirsting. It was all pretty vague.
Most of the articles he found turned Mabus around and called the damned man Sudam, and much as the
