The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,168
a 180-degree handbrake turn. Bianca shrieked as she was thrown against the door. He straightened out and headed south-west.
To her surprise, rather than accelerating, he slowed to the legal speed limit. ‘What’re you doing?’ Bianca asked.
‘Making us seem less suspicious. Look relaxed.’
‘Oh, nothing could be easier!’
Vehicles appeared ahead. A pair of black Lincoln Navigators, red and blue lights pulsing behind their radiator grilles. They rushed towards the Mustang – and whipped past, continuing to Harper’s home.
Bianca turned to look out of the rear window. ‘Do you think we fooled them?’
‘Their first priority is Harper’s safety,’ said Adam. ‘Or rather, his security. They need to make sure he hasn’t been compromised.’
‘I think they’ll work that out pretty quickly once they see what we left on his kitchen table.’ She gave him a doleful look. ‘Adam, the disk – your disk. We left it behind! It’s still in the recorder.’
‘I know.’
‘But it’s the only way to get your own memories back.’
‘Harper was more important.’
‘Is that you saying that, or him?’
He gave her a sharp look. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s evidence against Harper. If his persona made you leave it behind . . .’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m in control. If we’d taken another ten seconds to get out of there, the Secret Service would have seen us leave. I had to do it.’
‘I hope it was worth it.’
‘So do I. But once we’re somewhere safe, we’ll find out the truth.’
‘Sir, are you all right? Admiral Harper!’
Harper struggled back to wakefulness, painfully opening his eyes to see two men in dark suits standing over him. He squinted, making out coiled wires running from behind their ears into their collars. Secret Service agents.
But why were they here?
‘What happened?’ he grunted. More pain rolled through him as they helped him to sit up. His head was throbbing like the mother of all hangovers, but he hadn’t been drinking. He’d been . . .
What had he been doing? He remembered being in the car, talking on the phone, and then . . . he was here, lying on his kitchen floor. The orange glow of sunset was still visible outside, so not much time had passed.
He glanced at the panel by the door. A small red light was on, indicating that an alarm had been tripped. That explained the Secret Service’s presence – he must have not switched off the secondary system. Had he slipped and hit his head?
‘We don’t know what happened, sir,’ said one of the agents. ‘We’re doing a sweep of the house and grounds, but haven’t found anyone else here. Although . . . we did find something unusual. We don’t know what it is, though.’
‘What thing?’ He touched his forehead, wincing at a sharp pain.
‘On the table, sir. Can you stand?’
‘Yes, damn it, I can stand.’ He shook off their helping hands and struggled upright . . .
And froze, staring at the table.
The PERSONA device told him everything he needed to know.
‘You were wearing this when we found you,’ said the second agent. He held up the skullcap. ‘Sir, do you know what it is?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Harper growled, using anger to cover his fear.
Adam Gray had got what he came for.
45
The Traitor
The Mustang was parked outside an apartment building on a tree-lined street in Washington’s north-western quarter. It attracted no attention from passers-by; indeed, there was an almost identical vehicle a few spaces away. If a search was under way for the black Ford, it had yet to reach this part of the capital.
Adam lowered his window and, after checking that nobody was watching, casually dropped Harper’s phone down a drain. ‘I hope you got everything you needed from it,’ said Bianca.
‘I did.’ He had memorised a select few of the phone’s hundreds of contact numbers. ‘Now they won’t be able to use it to track us.’
‘Is that why you got me to chuck my phone?’ He had made Bianca dispose of it earlier in the day. ‘Great. Now I’ll have to re-download all my apps.’
‘I’m glad you’ve got your priorities straight, Dr Childs.’ There was an acerbic disapproval in his voice that immediately reminded her of Harper. ‘Sorry,’ he added, more normally. ‘I meant Bianca.’
‘So, you’ve definitely got Harper’s persona in your head. What does he know? What’s he hiding?’
‘A lot.’ Flashes of the Director of National Intelligence’s memories had already come to Adam. Harper had forty years of dark military and political secrets stored in his mind. ‘But I’m not going to tell you what.’