Puppet Master Read online

  He’d only taken a single sip when his cell phone began to buzz. It was in his pocket, set to vibrate—which in itself was weird, because he had no way of feeling it.

  Everything was different in this world.

  It was a Boston number. He didn’t recognize it, but decided to answer anyway. Maybe it was a doctor—or the hospital calling to tell him there had been a mistake; he wasn’t supposed to go home.

  “Hello? Johnny?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Chelsea Goodman. I stopped by to see you. They told me you were released.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “Oh. That’s great.”

  Johnny felt as if he should say something, but he wasn’t quite sure what.

  “You should come to the office,” said Chelsea. “Everyone would love to meet you.”

  “I’d like that,” said Johnny. “When?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “How about now?”

  “Well, it’s Saturday, but . . . sure. A lot of people are here. Including the boss.”

  “Maybe I’ll be there in a while, then,” he said. “What’s the address?”

  The outside of the Smart Metal building was very nineteenth century. Brick interrupted by steel cross beams, large windows that caught the sun and reflected the nearby harbor, a shiny metal roof with thick standing seams and snow guards.

  Inside, Smart Metal was the future, and beyond.

  While the shell of the old factory building had been restored, the interior had been gutted and completely rebuilt. It was now a building within a building, sleeker than anything Johnny had ever seen. The entrance lobby rose five stories above street level. Thick panels covered with granite rose to the ceiling; steel and glass walkways ran the length of the interior. Behind the panels on the first four floors were labs; there were offices on the fifth. Thick glass pipes ran across the top of each hallway, a ceiling of conduit, optic fiber, and HVAC trunks.

  For all its high-tech look, cooling the building was a major problem, Chelsea told Johnny as she led him through; though the most powerful computers were confined to the basement “processing farm,” there were workstations and even mainframes scattered throughout.

  “It got so bad last year Mr. Massina assigned me to write an algorithm that would take into account how much the computers were being used,” she said, pausing at the elevator on the first floor. “Since then it’s been better. Everyone sets their lab at a different temperature, though, which drives the maintenance people batty.”

  The elevator arrived. Like everything else in the place, it was cutting edge, both in appearance and in function. There were no buttons anywhere on the exotic wood paneling; you spoke the floor where you were going. There was a security benefit to that—the elevator would not take you to a floor if you weren’t authorized to go there, explained Chelsea.

  “Can’t you just take the stairs?” asked Johnny.

  “Doors won’t open, except in an emergency. If you weren’t with me, you couldn’t get out of the visitors’ area on the first floor. That’s why you don’t need a pass.”

  “You’re my pass.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I better not let you out of my sight.”

  Chelsea led him out into another hallway, this one on the fourth floor. So far, they had seen labs where mechanical birds flew through mazes and an electric piano was hooked up to a computer that was composing its own music—melodic but somewhat boring.

  “This is the biomechanical lab,” said Chelsea. “This where your next heart will be grown.”

  “Grown?”

  Chelsea smiled, then waved him through the door.

  Full-spectrum fluorescents bathed the interior of the building with light so intense that Johnny had to shut his eyes so they could adjust. When he blinked them open, he found himself standing at the edge of a long row of what looked like oversized aquarium tanks, the sort a fish farm might use when breeding small fish. The interior of the room was very humid, and the place had a sweet smell unlike the rest of the building.

  “Nutrient baths,” said Chelsea, stepping over to one of the large tanks. “Think of them as large, artificial wombs.”

  Johnny followed her. The tank, a good three meters long and another meter wide, looked empty, except for a pair of marbles nestled in what looked like rubber material at the bottom.

  They weren’t marbles.

  “Eyes,” said Chelsea. “They’re grown from pig cells. The difficult thing is the interface.”

  “Human eyes?” asked Johnny.

  “They will be. Eventually. We have a lot of work to do.”

  She continued down the tanks. Two lab technicians were working at the far end, running a series of tests on handheld instruments whose wires snaked into one of the tanks. Chelsea waved at them but didn’t interrupt. She led Johnny around the tanks to a bench where a set of large flat screens, each roughly eighty inches diagonally, were lined up in front of keyboards. Screen savers played on the screens, creating multi-stringed parabolas that morphed from red to green to blue and back. They looked like webs made by spiders tripping on LSD.

  Chelsea tapped one of the keyboards. The screen behind it blanked. She bent over and began typing rapidly.

  That girl has a beautiful shape, Johnny thought. He’d noticed it before, but something about the way she leaned forward now made lust erupt in him.

  It scared him a little. He wasn’t sure he could act on that impulse anymore. It was the one area he hadn’t talked about with the doctors—an oversight born of shyness and fear.

  But she was beautiful.

  “This is what your mechanical heart looks like,” said Chelsea as a three-dimensional image rotated on the screen. “And this is what the next generation will look like.”

  The device on the left side of the screen looked like a pair of inverted and intertwined trumpet mouthpieces made of white plastic. The bottom openings were fitted with corded plastic tubes; the tops looked not unlike the fittings on home plumbing. Between these two carbon and fiber constructs was a plastic-covered collection of circuitry, artificial nerves that not only governed the pump but were also grafted to Johnny’s nervous system and a set of leads that could be used to test and monitor the unit externally.

  His was handmade, fitted, and programmed specifically to his needs. All of them were, adapted from a basic but flexible blueprint.

  On the right side of the screen was something that looked exactly like a “real” heart except for the wires and the nubbed fitting on the bottom.

  “How long before that’s ready?” Johnny asked.

  “Mmmmm . . . Hard to say. The growing techniques are still in their infancy.”

  “Is this what you do?”

  “No. My field is AI—artificial intelligence. I work primarily with the robots. But I do a little of everything. That’s what I love about working here.”

  “I want to work here,” Johnny told her. He felt he was gushing almost—he was intrigued and excited by everything he saw, and it was hard to hold his emotions in check. “I want to be part of this. How do I join?”

  “As scientist?”

  “As—security or something like that. Are you still working on the ATM case?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You are,” said Johnny. “I can help on that.”

  “We’re working on it, but not with the Bureau. Not officially,” she told him. “Your boss didn’t want us involved.”

  “Well, I can work with you on that. I can be involved. You’re not an investigator, but I am. Who do I talk to?” Johnny asked. “Mr. Massina?”

  “I don’t know that there are openings.”

  “He told me if I wanted anything, to see him. Is he in?”

  “Isn’t it kind of soon for a job?”

  “Take me to him. Please.”

  57

  Donetsk, occupied Ukraine—a little while later

  The air inside the building smelled like pulverized bri
ck, as if the façade had been ground into tiny particles and was now being sent through the ventilating system: an impossibility, given not only the lack of such a system in the structure, but anything resembling a roof. There was no electricity either, and nothing that it could have powered; Tolevi followed the path of his captor’s flashlight as he was marched to a crate at the back corner of a building a block from the butcher’s. The nearby floor was littered with rags and shoes. He kicked one as he walked, and something rolled out from under the pile; it was a syringe.

  It took him a few moments to realize the building had been used as a makeshift hospital.

  “What is your name?” asked the man with the gun when Tolevi sat down. So far the men had done nothing physical to him, barely even threatening him, really.

  No doubt that wasn’t going to last.

  “Gabor Tolevi.”

  “Why were you at the butcher’s?” asked the man with the gun again.

  “Stew meat,” said Tolevi.

  Against all logic, he hoped for the reply that would show the man was his contact. Instead he got a slap across the face.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I am in the import business,” said Tolevi. “I sell things at wholesale and—”

  Another slap, but this one was with the butt of the AK. Tolevi tumbled to the floor, jaw broken.

  “You will tell me why you are here, Russian,” demanded the man. “No more games!”

  Before Tolevi could think of an answer, the room exploded. He felt himself being thrown backward into an abyss, the world vanishing beneath him.

  Blasphemy

  Flash forward

  Louis Massina was on top of the world, and he was falling, sliding, unable to stop, unable to save himself.

  God, he prayed, if it’s your will to let me die . . .

  The prayer died on his lips.

  If it’s God’s will, the nuns all taught, so be it.

  So be it.

  No way. No.

  The bastard’s going to kill me, and there’s so much more I have to do. I cannot die now. No. I am not going to die.

  “God,” he said aloud, voice trembling, “if it’s your will that I die, screw it, because I’m not going, not without a fight.”

  58

  Real time

  Donetsk—moments later

  Tolevi rolled on the floor as the room exploded, covering his head with his arms. The flash of light had left him temporarily blinded; the loud boom made him deaf.

  He thought about Borya back home. He was supposed to call her tonight at 5:00 p.m. her time.

  Not going to make that.

  He tried to crawl out of the confusion, unsure where he was going but believing movement would save him. Air rushed past and the ground rumbled; he heard something in the distance, a metallic rattle, then a softer but stranger sound, a thin sheet of aluminum foil being torn in two. Grit slammed into his face. He started to cough and pushed harder, dragging his legs across rubble, knowing that he had to get away, knowing that he would get away, but not sure what he had to get through to escape.

  Then he was lifted, flying in the air.

  Tolevi’s eyes felt glued shut. He started to cough again. The gunfire became louder. He became aware of the sides of his head pressing against the soft parts of his brain. He could feel his skull from the inside, could feel the bones as if they were a helmet pressing around his entire being.

  I’m flying.

  He moved his hands to pry his eyes open, but the lids wouldn’t budge.

  A rush of cold air against his face. He opened his mouth and gulped. It smelled of the night, damp, thick with exhaust.

  Someone called to him from the distance. Lights were moving nearby.

  A car?

  He fell onto something hard. The side of his face brushed along metal.

  He was in a car or a truck, on the floor. They were moving. A voice floated over him in a language he couldn’t make out.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

  Russian. It was Russian.

  “Da,” he mumbled, answering his own thought, not the voice. It continued, strengthening in tone, starting to become coherent. It was asking him questions, asking him why he had gone in there, what the wolves had wanted.

  Volki. Wolves.

  Not a question about whether he was OK.

  Which should tell him something, should identify who he was with, but it didn’t.

  Other voices, speaking Russian.

  Two hands took hold of Tolevi from the back and hauled him upward, pushing him around so that he was sitting back to the wall of the vehicle. Water slopped over his face. Shaking his head, Tolevi reached his hands to his eyes and rubbed them.

  He blinked; a flashlight shone on his face.

  “Why were you with the criminals?” asked the voice. It belonged to a man in a black combat uniform, kneeling next to him. He was wearing a black watch cap with a ninja-style mask that covered his face.

  They were in the back of a cargo van. Besides the man talking to him, there was another nearby, to his right. He, too, was wearing a mask. He was also holding an assault rifle—not an old Kalashnikov, like the man who’d stopped him on the street, but something newer, an AK-74 maybe, though Tolevi wasn’t sure. There were two men in the front of the truck; he could see their heads.

  “Why are you in the People’s Republic?” asked the man next to him.

  “Business,” mumbled Tolevi.

  “With the criminal government?”

  Tolevi struggled to clear his head. The man’s Russian had an accent that he couldn’t quite pick out, but he wasn’t Ukrainian.

  Special operations troops helping the rebels. Spetsnaz.

  Or not. They could be anyone, on any side.

  You’ll never see Borya again.

  “Where did you get these papers?” asked the man, holding them out.

  “Checkpoint,” said one of the men in front.

  The man who’d been questioning him stopped talking and moved to the other side of the van. But clearly they weren’t worried about being stopped: they slowed, the driver opened the window, and then they sped past.

  A few minutes later they stopped at the rear of a large house. Tolevi was led out of the truck, not gently but not roughly either, and walked to the back door. Other vans pulled up as they walked, driving past to a barnlike building fifty or so meters away.

  Inside, his escort pointed to a chair in the hallway and told him to wait. Tolevi sat down, scanning his surroundings. Oil paintings lined the walls, and the two lights he saw were small chandeliers, their chiseled crystals reflecting kaleidoscopically with a shimmer of bright white and tiny rainbow triangles.

  There were more people inside, many of them.

  I can probably walk out of here without anyone noticing, Tolevi thought. But where would I go?

  Best to play along and see where this leads.

  It was impossible to be in Tolevi’s business and not encounter difficult situations. He’d dealt with police and customs agents in Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, and Georgia; South America and Mexico. Most were surprisingly civil, more businesslike and less aggressive than the average traffic cop in the States. And these men, though clearly military, were far to the professional side of the spectrum. They weren’t treating him like a prisoner, really—no harsh pushes, no gruff language.

  Yet, anyway. So hopefully things would go well here.

  If not . . .

  If not, I’ll take what comes.

  59

  Boston—about the same time

  Borya glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. She was pretending to work on an essay on King Lear, her last remaining homework for the weekend. Martyak was inside talking on her cell phone to some dweeb; thank God for that, Borya thought, because otherwise she would be hovering over her at the table. The babysitter was making an effort to be friendly; she had even offered the night before to help her with her homework. But her help was worse th
an useless; she had an impossible interpretation of King Lear: a metaphoric statement about why war is hard on families. And even Borya could tell her spelling was atrocious.

  Borya’s father always called at certain intervals when he was gone, generally at 5:00 p.m. He was due to call tonight, but the hour had passed without a call.

  That wasn’t necessarily unusual, but Borya found herself missing him, and anxious to hear his voice. That was the strange thing about their relationship: when he was here, she couldn’t stand the way he was on her, always around, snooping, checking up on her. But when he was gone, she missed him dearly. She thought of things they might do, like getting ice cream, or maybe going to the movies.

  Not that he knew much about movies. But at least most times he would let her pick them. So it wouldn’t matter if he fell asleep in the theater, which he often did.

  “How’s it going in there?” asked Martyak from the den.

  “Slow.”

  “Has your father checked in yet?”

  “No.”

  “No text?”

  “He doesn’t usually text when he’s away. He calls.”

  “Did he call?”

  “No.”

  “He said he would. Tonight.” Martyak came into the kitchen. Her jeans were at least two sizes too small, a look that did nothing for her. Her lumpy sweatshirt was something an old lady would wear. The guy she was dating must be half blind.

  “You think he’s OK?” asked Martyak.

  “My dad is always OK,” shot Borya.

  “I’m just saying, he forgot to call. Maybe you should call him.”

  “I don’t have his number.”

  That was a lie so blatant that Borya couldn’t imagine why she had even said it. But the words were out there, and she couldn’t take them back.