The phalanx code, p.19
The Phalanx Code, page 19
Whatever the answers might be, I was now more motivated than ever to confront Blanc and force him to acquiesce, to release my people and find some path to settle the score between the two billionaires. I waited about thirty minutes until it was close to 11:00 P.M. in New York City. The activity in the city that never sleeps at least begins to ebb around this time.
I crossed Fifth Avenue and found the men’s clothing store drawn on Ximena’s map. At this hour it was locked, and the security cameras hummed with each robotic swivel. After two passes from either side of the road, the alley in between the men’s store and an adjacent apartment building seemed like the best option. I waited for a few cars to crawl past, then shot across the road into the alley, which was filled with trash bags stacked high from a restaurant in the bottom of the neighboring apartment building. Rats the size of small house cats scrambled as I plowed through the alley and climbed a fire escape ladder. The second story of the men’s shop had a narrow set of living quarters above it. Perhaps the owner’s residence?
Standing on the landing of the fire escape, an empty bedroom, den, and kitchen were all visible. No lights on and no signs of life, save the rats below. I used my elbow to smash a windowpane in the wooden side door, one of four rectangular windowpanes, reached in and turned the lock, slowly turned the knob, and stepped into the apartment. Moving through the upstairs, I found a spiral staircase that fed into the store’s back office area. Using the flashlight on the rail of my pistol, I swept it in every direction looking for cameras and trip wires. Holding my goggles to my eyes, I searched for infrared beams that could trigger a camera or alarm and found two.
Stepping into the circular stairway, a boot crunched the gravel and tar of the roof above me. Shadows moved across the window of the door through which I had entered. I braced against the handrails and slid to the first floor, rolling against a rack of suits yet to be put on display. Thuds sounded against the roof and the upstairs door opened. Something flashed across the front door window as I moved toward the rear of the office.
Having memorized the diagram that Ximena had provided me on the flash drive, I saw a China hutch where the door was drawn on the map. As someone scrambled down the stairwell, I leaned into the hutch and slid it fractionally until I could see the outline of a door. Pushing through the crease in the wall, I found a locking bar on the opposite side and flipped it down. Using the flashlight on my pistol, I navigated a dank tunnel that led generally northwest in the direction of Blanc’s condo building. Someone pounded on the door behind me and fired shots into the steel locking bar, to no avail. I imagined that this was an escape route for Blanc, and I was using it in the opposite purpose and direction for which it was intended.
The route hit a dead end into a cinder block wall. A loud bang signaled that my pursuers had somehow breached the door that was now maybe a hundred meters to my rear. My flashlight found a metal ladder, which I ascended until I hit a circular hatch, like a manhole cover. For a moment I wondered if I was beneath Fifth Avenue. The distance was about right.
Pushing up on the round metal plate, I found it gave way until I was able to roll onto an enclosed concrete slab. I slid the manhole cover until it was fitted back into the rim. I flipped a locking bar over the manhole cover and slipped hard plastic flex-cuffs from my pocket into the U-rings to secure the bar and hold off pursuers. Not perfect, but the best I had for the moment.
I ascended the switchback staircase that beckoned to my left, which matched the diagram that Ximena had provided me. Taking the steps three at a time, I lunged forward propelled in part by the subtle urgency of Mahegan’s call. Jake had been in difficult situations throughout our collective careers and only a few times had he asked for help. Even then, his requests were mostly logistical. Weapons, phones, cameras, data processing, information.
I couldn’t recall a time that he sent up the distress signal that he might be in a situation that he couldn’t personally resolve. While my children and closest relationships were in Drewson’s facility, so were my best operators. Hobart, Van Dreeves, and Mahegan, along with the teammates with whom they had served their entire professional lives. These were men and women that I had mentored and developed over the past three decades. Other than what I felt for my children, I had no greater love for anyone than everyone locked in that hyperloop right now. They were all that mattered to me.
I slowed my ascension as I approached the top landing.
They were all that mattered to me.
Drewson had collected us all into one location to help him with his nerdy project of delivering Web 3.0 to the masses.
As I put my back against the wall, these thoughts circled through my mind like birds of prey on the hunt. What was really happening?
Blanc was the richest man in the world and my half uncle, and he was terrorizing his enemies with assassin squads. Drewson, the second richest man in the world, juiced up Jake to break me out of prison, and asked me to find Evelyn. And Evelyn was an enigmatic elite living off generational wealth, or so it seemed, who had introduced me to the concept that my grandfather, Coop, had sired the monster Aurelius Blanc.
Where did I fit into this mix? I was a recently retired three-star general who mattered little in the grand scheme of things outside of my mostly clandestine world. Sure, I had led well and served my country as so many other good citizens had done, but what placed me at the center of this struggle between two titans of global power?
I felt the door to my left. It was cold to the touch, meaning it most likely led outside somewhere. Twisting the handle down, I pushed through the opening and rolled low onto an AstroTurf landing surrounded by designer planters the size of boulders. Lights shined onto the surrounding area, causing me a moment of vision adjustment. Spinning to one knee and raising my pistol, I saw a man with black hair and a white beard dressed in a black silk robe standing in the middle of the platform, his back turned to me. He was wearing black Pro-Ked tennis shoes and white athletic socks.
The usual melodies of New York City traffic sang upward with honks, shouts, and revving car engines even though it was near midnight. From my relatively protected position behind the planters, I sensed motion from all four directions. Shadows moved toward me even though the man in the robe remained motionless.
I lifted my pistol and raised above the shrubs in the planters when a shot rang out, striking me in the chest.
The last words I remember hearing were, “So good to finally meet you, nephew.”
21
I AWOKE IN A haze feeling like I had a couple of bruised ribs, which on the surface seemed a whole lot better than being dead.
That might have been a misjudgment.
Generously put, after being shot with a nonlethal stun gun, someone had secured me to a bed. Nylon strapping was cinched tightly across my chest and legs, though I had freedom of movement of my arms. The room was dark save ambient light leaking through drawn curtains. Soft linens and a heavy blanket covered me. I was still dressed in the same clothes, but my boots were not on my feet.
The rhombus flash drive in my boot was my first thought.
Across from me sat Aurelius Blanc with his awkward black hair and bleached white beard. Beyond that, though, were not the eyes of a madman but those of someone searching for answers. Though looks could be deceiving, he appeared inquisitive, not necessarily hateful. He lifted a remote and elevated the bed so that I was at a forty-five-degree angle and able to look him in the eyes.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
I said nothing.
“Garrett, we shot you with the stun gun because, as you certainly know, you are a most dangerous man,” Blanc said.
I said nothing. He continued.
“I’m not sure what Mitch Drewson may have told you, but I can also assure you that he has lied to you on a grand scale.”
I said nothing.
“My company, Phalanx, is the one that is attempting to unify the world, its people, by bringing peace and harmony. If you think about the term, Phalanx, it’s a noun that embodies the spirit of protection, of strength in numbers. My vision has always been to extend power to the people.”
He paused. I looked at an unopened bottle of water on the nightstand next to me.
“Pardon my manners,” he said.
He leaned over and with one hand released the top nylon strap with a pop. He freed my torso, extending the bottle of water to me with the other hand. I took it from him and unscrewed the top, never breaking contact with his eyes. He stared at me a second longer and then popped open the other strap. My legs were free.
“My men take extra precautions,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you or even harm you. On the contrary, I’ve been waiting all my life to meet you.”
I sucked down the bottle of water and screwed the top back on, then leaned my head into the pillow, thinking. Drewson, Blanc, and Champollion. What did they all have in common? What made them different?
The honest answer was that Blanc was related to me. His motivation would be the purest, whether fueled by hate or love. There would be little middle ground for Blanc. Where was Evelyn in this? She was a childhood friend of Blanc. Did she truly love me or was she part of the manipulation? Unless she was an Oscar-winning actress, her actions felt like love to me, but then again, I had known only one true love in my life, Melissa. Finally, there was Drewson and his eagerness to help me and my team. Misha’s presence with Drewson had disarmed me, as had the presence of my team and friends. Did I still assess Drewson through objective eyes or even at all? Mahegan’s troubled call gave me pause, but then again, maybe Drewson had just been running late. Or maybe their confinement in the hyperloop was a protective measure against Blanc’s forces attacking the Wyoming compound.
“Have it all figured out?” he asked, studying me. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs. His black hair and white beard were stark contrasts in the dim light.
“Why the monochrome?” I asked.
He chuckled.
“It’s grayscale. Everything is digital. Thank you for noticing.”
His voice was masculine and pleasant. He was at ease with himself and the situation. He was calm as opposed to when I met Drewson, who had seemed overcaffeinated. Blanc’s confidence seemed firm.
“What do you remember of Coop?” I asked him. I wanted to see how he reacted to this question without preamble.
He smiled gently and said, “I loved him. He was a great man and he treated us very well. I just wish … I had more of him.”
There was no hesitation or indication of untruthfulness. This was a son speaking admirably of a father.
“I was there, you know,” he said.
“Where?”
“Arlington. For his funeral. My mother and I.”
“Why didn’t I see you?”
“We waited in the car. A black limousine that was parked maybe fifty meters from you. You looked directly at us. At me. But the windows were blackened, and I doubt you could have noticed. I waved, held my hand up against the window, leaving little steam fingerprints like a kid even though it was just a few years ago.”
I remembered the car but still didn’t believe him. It was five years ago. I had just been promoted to brigadier general. Melissa was still alive and dressed in black, her red hair lying softly on her collar and her gloved hands laced through my arm. I was wearing my dress blue uniform with saucer cap and star on the sleeves. My new uniform pants fit precisely with a military crease just above the ankle. I was shaken to my core and was focused on my family, not an unknown interloper. My guard was down, and I was not in my usual scan mode looking for anomalies.
I nodded.
“I don’t blame you, Garrett, and I’m not mad at your Coop, or as I called him, Papa. Sometimes as a child when I saw him more frequently, it was ‘Papa the Parachutist.’ I used to run around Sainte-Mère-Église and shout that when I was three or four years old. My mother would laugh, and Papa seemed happy. I was proud of him. My father, the paratrooper who saved our village. Saved my mother. Made my entrance into this world possible.”
His eyes were brimming with the joy of memories. These were true stories in which he seemed grounded. Hearing Coop referred to as “Papa” in such an endearing term made me wonder if my own father loved Coop as much as Blanc seemed to.
“And yet, you have your Phalanx squads wreaking havoc around the globe trying to move the world to an authoritarian state.”
He sat back in his chair, the light of childhood memories gone from his eyes.
“We will discuss that shortly because we need to. But the matter of Evelyn Champollion is a higher priority at the moment.”
“There is no higher priority than the safety of my people. Are you attacking Drewson’s Wyoming compound?” My voice was firm, unwavering.
He cocked his head at me and slowly turned it from side to side.
“As important as Evelyn is to me,” he said, “I can agree that this matter must be cleared up.”
“Then answer my question,” I demanded.
“Come with me,” he said.
As I began to slide out of the bed, there was a movement from the far corner of the expansive room.
“It’s okay, Max,” Blanc said.
I looked at Max, and it was the same Maximillian who was the leader of the Sharpstone security team that had picked me up at Stewart Airfield in Newburgh yesterday. I looked back at Blanc, who nodded that he understood my confusion. Were Evelyn and Blanc working together? Why was Evelyn’s security team inside Blanc’s compound? Where were Cyrilla and her team? What could be more important than protecting their boss, Blanc?
“All is not as it seems, Garrett. I want to show you more.”
I stood and leaned against the bed, stretching my back and feeling the pain from the rubber bullet that struck me. My mind was woozy, and I asked Blanc, “Did you drug me?”
“Technically, I did not, but Max did. You are, after all, the former commander of the American Special Forces. It would have been unwise for us to attempt to reason with you up front when you have been fed so much disinformation.”
I walked toward the edge of the bed. The door was behind Blanc, who was to my left. Maximillian was to my distant right, still in the shadows of the corner. I was still wearing the same clothes but had been stripped of my weapons and had Ximena’s blood on my hoodie. I wasn’t sure I wanted or needed the weapons, but, like good friends, they were always nice to have close at hand. Someone had neatly placed my boots side by side at the foot of the bed. I leaned down and pulled them on my feet, feeling the zipper pocket inside the boot. The rhombus flash drive was still there.
“That’s the problem with disinformation,” I said, feeling still a bit groggy. “Nothing is true anymore today. The world is just one big spin machine with LanxPro gobbling up a gazillion petabytes of data out there and spitting it back at us.”
“That would be a yottabyte and you’re not wrong, Garrett,” he said. I continued moving around the bed as he held out his hand showing me the way. Another security guard stood in the doorway. Black cargo pants. Black polypro, long-sleeved shirt. Black outer tactical vest. AR-15 with its sling clipped into a snap hook. Sheathed K-bar knife horizontal across his vest. “But think about this. The articles about you. Do you see them anymore?”
“I’m not really an internet guy, so I wouldn’t know.”
“We removed them from the BackInTime Machine, which I created and own. It captures every single utterance on the Web. Tweets, Optimus, LanxPro, Shoutter, Facebook, Instagram. It’s all there archived every second of every day. Artificial intelligence and machine learning catalogue it so it’s easy to reference. LanxPro software can reverse engineer and follow the path of the data, perhaps a newspaper article, and we can erase it forever from the internet. Everywhere.”
“A lot of power,” I said.
He nodded. “It’s all that matters now. We are moving to a society in which everyone either has an online avatar or someone makes one for you. It’s getting harder to control your persona even if you engage every day, as I do. But when you actually own what’s on the internet and can remove it, that’s a kind of power that is hard to comprehend.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“Even though I am younger than you, I’m your uncle. As I’ve told you, family is everything to me. I removed anything and everything from the internet about you to protect your reputation.”
“I saw you at Dakhla last year. I know the intelligence on you,” I said. He had been on the balcony watching as Sanson the Executioner was about to behead Evelyn and President Campbell on livestream television. It was some sort of symbolic gesture from China and their US Partnership to cede sovereignty to a higher global structure of governance being billed as a “first step.”
“It’s true, I was there because my technology had been watching over Evelyn. When she told me she was going to the Richat Structure, I begged her not to go into the Eye of Africa. I knew what China and our two countries were doing. I was there to save her. I had nothing to do with those negotiations. I was arguing with General Liang when you and your team arrived in the nick of time.”
That wasn’t how I remembered it, but admittedly I was focused on Sanson and his giant saber hanging above the president’s head.
“What is your relationship with Evelyn?” I asked.
“I owe her my life. She saved me from drowning on Normandy Beach. I’m a big strong man now, but I was a scrawny kid then. The riptide pulled me out between a few sunken landing craft.” He looked away as we continued walking into a large living room with sofas and televisions. There were guards in each of the corners dressed in tactical gear and holding long rifles.
“Then why were you keeping her in a cell in Biarritz?” I asked.
“That was all performative art by your friend Mitch Drewson. He had her housed there. We have a bit of a technology battle going on, and he’s figured out how to block some of my intelligence capabilities such as smart dust and the like. I lost the trail of Evelyn once she entered Drewson’s compound, which has three layers of jamming. Next thing I know, you’re on the way to Biarritz.”
