The Traveler

When the elevator reached the lobby, Hollis pushed the bucket out and nodded to a young couple with a cocker spaniel. The entrance door clicked open and three Tabula mercs hurried into the lobby. They looked like police officers who were doing this for money. One man wore a denim jacket and his two pals were dressed as painters. The painters carried towels and drop cloths that concealed their hands.

Hollis ignored the Tabula as they pushed past him. He was five feet away from the door when an older Latino man pushed open the door that led to the swimming pool area. “Hey, what’s going on?” the man asked Hollis.

“Somebody dropped a bottle of cranberry juice on the fifth floor. I just cleaned it up.”

“I didn’t see that in the morning report.”

“It just happened.” Hollis was at the door now, almost touching the knob.

“Besides, isn’t that Freddy’s job? Who are you working for?”

“I was just hired by-”

But before Hollis could finish the sentence he sensed movement behind him. And then the hard point of a gun muzzle was pushed against the small of his back.

“He’s working for us,” said one of the men.

“That’s right,” said another man. “And he’s not done.”

The two men dressed as painters stood beside Hollis. They made him turn around and guided him back to the elevator. The man with the denim jacket was talking to the maintenance man, showing him a letter that described some kind of official permission.

“What’s going on?” Hollis tried to look surprised and frightened.

“Don’t talk,” whispered the larger man. “Don’t say one damn thing at all.”

Hollis and the two painters stepped into the elevator. Just before the door closed, Denim Jacket slipped in and punched the button for the eighth floor.

“Who are you?” Denim asked.

“Tom Jackson. I’m the janitor here.”

“Don’t bullshit us,” said the smaller painter. He was the one with the weapon. “That guy out there didn’t know who you were.”

“I just got hired here two days ago.”

“What’s the name of the company that hired you?” Denim asked.

“It was Mr. Regal.”

“I asked you the name of the company.”

Hollis shifted slightly so that he was away from the barrel of the gun. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m real sorry. But all I know is that Mr. Regal hired me and I was told to-”

He made a half turn, grabbed the gunman’s wrist, and thrust it outward. With his right hand he punched the man in the Adam’s apple. The gun went off with a loud cracking sound in the small space and the other painter was shot. He screamed as Hollis whipped around, smashing his elbow into Denim’s mouth. Hollis twisted the gunman’s arm downward and the Tabula merc dropped the weapon.

Turn. Attack. Spin around and punch again. Within a few seconds, all three men were lying on the floor. The door opened. Hollis flipped the red switch to stop the elevator and stepped out. He ran down the hallway, found the fire exit, and ran down the stairs two at a time.

37

When Michael was growing up on the road he had an automatic response to his mother’s wild stories and Gabriel’s impractical schemes for making money. It’s time to go to Reality Town, he told them, which meant that someone in the family had to be objective about their problems. Michael considered himself to be the Mayor of Reality Town-not a pleasant location, perhaps, but at least you knew where you stood.

Living at the research center, he found it difficult to be objective. There was no question that he was a prisoner. Even if he discovered a way to get out of his locked room, the security guards would never let him stroll through the gates and catch a bus to New York City. Perhaps he had lost his freedom-but that fact didn’t trouble him. For the first time in his life people seemed to be giving him the right amount of respect and deference.

Every Tuesday, Michael would join Kennard Nash for drinks and dinner in the oak-paneled office. The general dominated the conversation, explaining the hidden objectives behind what appeared to be random occurrences. One night Nash described the RFID chip hidden in American passports, and showed photographs of a device called a “skimmer” that could read passports from a distance of sixty-five feet. When the new technology was first proposed, a few experts had called for a “contact” passport that had to be pushed through a slot like a credit card, but the Brethren’s friends in the White House had insisted on the radio frequency chip.

“Is the information encrypted?” Michael asked.

“Of course not. That would make it difficult to share the technology with other governments.”

“But what if terrorists use the skimmers?”

“It would certainly make their job easier. Let’s say a tourist was walking through the marketplace in Cairo. A skimmer could read his passport-find out if he was American and if he had visited Israel. By the time this American reached the end of the street, an assassin could be stepping out of a nearby doorway.”