The Aegis Solution (40 page)

"You knew how to read plans?"

"I learned," she told Elias, a hint of pride in her voice. "I must have spent about a thousand hours
staring at them, flipping between the pages, walking the areas they corresponded to. Eventually, they
started to make sense. I never did decipher the gobbledygook on the electrical pages, or the mechanical
stuff. Most of the plumbing was fairly obvious. But the real gold mine was on the ‘A' pages and the civil
engineering pages. That's where I found the layouts and accesses for all of the secret passageways and
the storm system. It's all there."

She sat back in the dinette chair with a look of pride and satisfaction. "There was one thing I never
could figure out, though."

"What's that?" Wilson inquired, amused.

"He told me where his blueprints were. These aren't blue."

Chuckling, Wilson explained, "It's a throwback to the old method for reproducing plans. A French
chemist discovered that ferro-gallate in gum is light sensitive. Light turns it blue. Basically, if you drew
a sketch on a translucent material, then overlaid the sketch onto a sheet coated with the ferro-gallate and
exposed it to light, the paper would turn blue, except for where the lines had been drawn. Later on, they
began to use ammonium ferric citrate and potassium ferricyanide, but the process was essentially the
same. The next generation were actually called whiteprints or bluelines because the paper was white and
the lines were blue. In recent years, the industry switched to very large photocopy machines, which can
print a copy on regular bond paper. That is what you are looking at now. But the original name
remains."

Tillie had stared at Wilson throughout the lecture, wide-eyed. "Cool, thanks!" she exclaimed at the
end.

"Back to our issue," Elias broke in. "We need to find a good hiding spot. Tillie set up housekeeping
in the mechanical system. I used the electrical raceways and junctions. We took Eric through the storm
system. So they are all compromised."

"Do you think so?" Wilson pondered out loud. "Looking at these plans, it is clear that all three of
those systems are elaborate. Couldn't we just pick another spot in one of them? A place well removed
from our previous locations?"

Elias responded thoughtfully, "Although we only occupied or traveled a small portion of each, if
Eric communicated with his handler, they will all be checked. That's what I would do. And with the
Zippers doing the looking, they should be able to cover quite a bit of territory."

"Why don't we break up the ‘A' pages and the ‘Civil' pages and divvy them up instead of all three
of us staring at the same sheet?"

"Excellent idea, Tillie," Wilson agreed. "As proprietary as you are about them, I was afraid to
suggest it."

She made a rude sound with her lips. "C'mon guys, I'm not that bad. Am I?"

"Oh, no!"

"No! Not at all."

She looked at them both and grinned. "Okay, maybe I've been a little testy. But we do have to work
together, so let's split them up."

She carefully peeled back the blue binding paper on the stapled edge, and pried up the staples, one
by one, with a fingernail. Removing all of them without tearing a sheet or cutting herself, she created
three stacks. Elias took his pages and moved to a coffee table. Tillie, being the youngest and most limber
of the three, sat cross-legged on the floor with her set, and Wilson stayed at the dinette.

The three worked quietly, the silence only broken with the occasional sound of a sheet being set
aside. Nearly twenty minutes passed before Elias thumped the blueprint with his finger. "This may
work."

The two came to the coffee table and looked at the portion of the page where he pointed.

"There appears to be a primary water reservoir which is filled by the pumps. That one, I'm sure,
is full right now. But, look, there are four reserve tanks. They only take on water if the primary is filled,
and they take on the water sequentially."

"In other words," Wilson interjected, "the first reserve tank only has water in it if the primary tank
is full. Then the second reserve only gets water if the first reserve fills to capacity."

"And so on," Elias completed the thought for him. "I think it might be worth a try to check out
the last tank in the series. It is probably dry as a bone."

"How do we get in the tank?" Tillie stopped herself. "Oh, never mind, I see it. There's an access
door."

"Exactly. It's actually called a hatch."

"I think it's worth a shot," she decided.

The journey from ZooCity to the water tank took three-quarters of an hour, due to the loads all
three carried, compounded by the circuitous route taken to avoid others.

"This thing looks like a vault," Tillie observed, breathing as easily as if she had just finished a
leisurely stroll.

Elias and Wilson, panting heavily, dropped their packs, duffel bags, and weapons, approaching her
side as she examined the oval steel hatch set into a retaining ring.

"This is the clean-out access at the bottom of the tank. There is also another access hatch at the top
that can be used when the reservoir is holding water. You'll notice that this hatch swings inward. That
wheel on it releases the dogs gripping the retaining ring, but if water is present on the other side, the
pressure from the water pushes against the door, keeping it closed."

Listening to Elias' explanation, Tillie concluded, "So if we spin the wheel and try to open it, nothing
will happen if the tank is full?"

"Right."

"You're sure?"

He grinned. "I am."

"Then let's do it."

She stepped forward, gripped the wheel with both hands, and turned it. It moved easily, quickly
accelerating to a blurred spin. When it slammed noisily to a stop and they could see that the hinged dogs
were retracted from the retaining ring, she glanced once at Elias, said, "Here goes," and put her shoulder
to the hatch, which almost flew open, pulling her inside where she tumbled to the concrete floor.

"Ouch!" she shouted, her voice followed by a multitude of overlaid echoes from the inside walls
of the dry tank.

"I think it's dry," Wilson proclaimed with a smirk, and high-stepped through the hatchway behind
her. Elias followed, chuckling.

Within a few minutes they had quickly checked out the interior of the tank with their flashlights.
Determining that it was clear, they brought in their packs and supplies, and closed the hatch behind
themselves. The hatch had a matching wheel on the interior, and as the others toted the gear to the
middle of the tank, Elias spun the wheel shut, putting his weight behind it to make it tight.

Returning to Wilson and Tillie, he told them, "After I catch my breath, I'll go back out and find a
long bar or something we can use to jam the wheel. That might cut down on unwanted visitors."

"Just a sec." Tillie motioned at him and pulled open her duffel bag, extracting a short pole with
what appeared to be a wide bicycle seat at one end. She pressed a button and the seat came off. Then,
pressing another, the pole extended and locked into position with a click. She tossed it to Elias.

"Will this work?"

Elias examined the device. "I think it will. It looks fairly sturdy. What is it?"

She grinned. "Something goofy one of the newbies brought in. It's a pole seat that you can carry
with you on camping trips. It's uncomfortable as all get-out. I don't even know why I brought it."

Elias took the pole and walked back to the hatch. He jammed it through an opening between the
spokes on the wheel at an angle so that if someone tried to open it from the outside, it would stop.
Satisfied, he returned to the group to see that Tillie had unpacked collapsible chairs, which converted
into sleeping cots, and had set them up next to the steel ladder that ascended to the hatch at the top of
the storage tank. She had also unpacked a lantern, creating an island of light in the center of the
cavernous tank. She was now assembling a small portable stove.

"Did you bring the s'mores?" Elias teased.

With a sly grin, Tillie pulled out packages of marshmallows and graham crackers. "Need to find the
chocolate. I know it's in here."

"Mathilda, you amaze me," Wilson said sincerely.

"That's my goal in life. To amaze people wherever I may go."

Within twenty minutes they were sitting in a circle around the stove, sipping hot tea and munching
on the drippy, chocolate concoctions.

Tillie, between bites, asked, "Were you able to make any sense out of what Eric said to you at the
end?"

Elias swallowed the last bite of his snack and took a long sip before answering. "Not as much as
I would have liked."

Tillie wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "How long have you known Eric?"

"A long time. About twenty years."

"Were you friends?"

"I used to think so. Eric and I had worked in the field at the same time. Went through quite a bit
together. Saved each other's butts more than once. I was even his son's godfather. And Leah was the
godmother."

"What happened?"

"There are basically three kinds of spooks in the business. The first group would be the patriots.
For them, it's all about what's best for the country. The second group would be the mercenaries. They
do it because they crave the adrenaline rush. They have no allegiance to any country. The third group
would be what I call the pragmatists and some of the think-tank experts refer to as survivalists. They
pick the side which is in their best self-interest. They are, by far, the easiest to turn since they have no
loyalty at all. If they are busted, if their cover is blown, then they talk, and they cooperate.

"The pragmatists will switch sides in a minute if they perceive that the other side is winning. As for
the mercenaries, a lot of people think that they will always work for the highest bidder. In my
experience, that isn't the case. They tend to gravitate toward the entity offering the most cutting-edge
hardware and the highest risks. The patriots are the toughest to go against; you can't turn them, and they
will charge the machine gun nest, if that's what it takes."

Leaning forward on his canvas chair, Wilson asked, "Which one was Eric?"

"I used to think that Eric was a patriot, years ago. Maybe he was at one time. He never exhibited
the adrenaline-junkie tendencies to tell me he was a mercenary."

"So that leaves survivalist."

"That's right. Something happened in Eric's world. Something changed, which caused him to come
to the conclusion that the side I was on was no longer the winning side."

"But you have no idea what that might be?"

"No, Wilson, I don't. And I didn't have a chance to find out from him."

"Sorry about that," Tillie apologized. "I should have waited longer before I pulled the trigger."

Chuckling, Elias assured her, "Tillie, that's not what I meant. If I had confronted him with a
weapon that functioned, I might have learned something."

"Before you blew him away."

"Before I blew him away."

Wilson continued his questioning. "From what you and Tillie told me, I believe there is little doubt
but that you and your wife were getting too close for their comfort. Did she communicate anything to
you before she…while she still had a chance? Anything which might give you a clue as to what they are
planning?"

"No. Nothing. We had no contact for days prior to the end, which was normal for that type of an
assignment."

"So all we've really learned, thus far, is why you were brought here instead of simply being executed.
They needed to know how much you knew and, of course, whether you had told anyone."

"Exactly. And once Eric found out that I didn't know the location of the lab or specifically what
they were making, he knew there was no reason to keep me around."

Tillie frowned. "But he said something about one more function you needed to fulfill. What was
that all about?"

Elias thought back for a moment. "That's right. He did say that. I have no idea what he meant,
though."

"And what do you know about the lab?" Tillie asked, taking another sip of tea.

"Not much. All Benjamin told me was that it was a bio-weapon lab and that they were working on
a new aerosol material."

Wiping the melted chocolate off his fingers, Elias began to break down the AK-47. Wilson and
Tillie watched the practiced, swift movements.

After a few moments, Wilson pressed on. "Is your colleague in Israel continuing his efforts to gain
additional information from this Bassam?"

Elias shook his head as he inserted the firing pin in place. "No, Benjamin has squeezed all of the
juice he could out of that particular lemon. What he told me was all there was to glean from Bassam."

"Why was Eric specifically in Aegis?" Wilson asked. "And what does Kreitzmann have to do with
this puzzle?"

"I thought we decided that Eric was here as bait to attract Elias," Tillie stated.

"He was. That's not what Wilson is asking. I think his question is why Aegis and not someplace
else. And the answer is that they wanted to put me in an environment where there is nothing I can do
with the knowledge I might have. They have effectively cut me off from any allies or any other agencies
or even governments who might have a concern about Faulk's actions."