Page 30 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code (The NUMA Files #21)

Adam’s Deli was on the ground floor of a nondescript office complex two blocks from the NUMA building, next to what had once been a RadioShack. Its front door opened onto the street, and at lunchtime it often boasted a line that stretched out onto the sidewalk. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Rudi found only a smattering of customers and the crew doing cleanup.

He stepped inside to the jingle of an old-fashioned bell that was attached to the door. The owner, a man with a gray mustache and a few wispy hairs wrapped around his scalp in a comb-over, turned to greet him. “You’re Rudi, no?”

Rudi nodded.

The man came out from behind the counter, untying his apron and offering a strange look. “You’re taller than Kurt said you’d be.”

Rudi offered a half smile. “Napoleon and I both get a bad rap,” he said. “I’m told I have a phone call.”

“Yes, yes, right this way.” He ushered Rudi down a narrow hall half blocked by cardboard boxes filled with cups, straws, paper towels, and other vital supplies.

“Good customer, that Kurt,” the owner said. “And funny. He’s always joking.”

“Are you Adam?” Rudi asked.

“No, my father was Adam,” the man said. “My name is Gris. But Gris’s Deli doesn’t have the best ring to it.”

Gris opened a door to the back office, revealing a space even more cramped than the narrow hallway. “I give you your privacy,” he said. “But don’t talk too loud; the walls are thin.”

Rudi sat at a desk covered in receipts and invoices and half-finished cups of coffee. Amid the mess, he found an olive-green push-button phone that might have been there since the eighties. One light was blinking, which he assumed was Kurt. Lifting the scuffed receiver, he placed it to his ear and pressed the blinking button.

“This better not be a joke,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll assign you to Antarctic detail and make sure you get only warm-weather gear better suited for snorkeling in the Bahamas.”

“Great to hear you, too,” Kurt said. “Even if you are a little crankier than usual.”

“You and Joe have been off the radar for three days. And the Indian government has been pressuring us to tell them where you are and what you’re doing there. That raises my irritability level.”

“Which is why you should thank me for not updating you on our activities,” Kurt said smugly. “That way you didn’t have to lie.”

Rudi noticed the audio was very flat, almost like an AM radio broadcast through an old mono speaker. He wondered where Kurt was calling him from. More important, why he was calling the delicatessen instead of the office. “Unless you plan to keep me in the dark, how about you start by telling me why I’m talking on a phone that’s coated with olive oil and several decades of grime when the high-tech, encrypted phone in my air-conditioned office works just fine?”

“The problem is it works a little too fine,” Kurt said.

He went on to explain why he believed the NUMA communications system and possibly even the entire server network had been hacked. “Between the odd messages on my phone and the real-time takedown of the emergency networks on Reunion, I’m getting the sense that these guys can hack into any system they want, anytime they want, in the blink of an eye.”

“You think the two things are connected?”

“They have to be,” Kurt said. “The same guy who jumped us in Reunion showed up here almost before we did. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Interesting , Rudi thought. He’d been frustrated that Kurt and Joe had gone off to India in search of the answer to this random message. But now the seemingly random events appeared to be linked. Perhaps letting Kurt and Joe chase their electronic ghosts had been a stroke of luck.

“If these guys can hack anything they want in real time, what makes you think this deli with its Wi-Fi password we_love_sandwiches_#1 is some bastion of security?”

“Because it’s not linked to NUMA in any way. There’s no reason for anyone to be monitoring the landlines of a small dining establishment. The only way this line is tapped is if they’re monitoring everything, everywhere, all the time, like Big Brother and the Thought Police.”

Rudi had to admit it wasn’t a bad idea. If the high-tech systems had been compromised, low-tech was the way to go. Off-site, low-tech was even better. “Okay, we’ll go with that for now. But Hiram isn’t going to appreciate you suggesting his computers have been hacked. You may find your laptop and other high-tech gear inoperative when you get home.”

Kurt laughed. The hidden power of the IT department was not to be trifled with. “I can never get a printer to work correctly as it is, so no big loss. On the other hand, if it prevents the people we are dealing with from getting the jump on us again, it’s worth it.”

As Rudi listened intently, Kurt described their discovery of the stowaways on the lower deck of the Soufriere and the chaos that followed. He relayed the details of torture and experimentation that Five and his brothers had endured, and finished with the possibility—Kurt insisted it was a probability—that Five had been cloned.

Rudi didn’t react, though he found the idea of someone creating humans just to conduct torturous experiments on them abhorrent. “Any idea who’s behind this?”

“I was hoping you could tell us.”

Rudi was at a loss. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“By telling us where Five came from,” Kurt said. “Have Hiram and Max go over the data from the tracking beacon and then extrapolate for the time before it was activated while adjusting for the drift based on wind, waves, current, and the possibility of powered travel. They were picked up by that freighter in a tricky area of the sea, with intersecting currents and variable winds, so you’ll have to get detailed weather reports to make the analysis work, but backtracking forty-eight hours should point us toward the island Five came from.”

“And then what?”

“Get someone to look into it,” Kurt said. “My choice would be the 82nd Airborne, or a UN team that investigates crimes against humanity backed up by a battalion of Marines.”

Rudi knew instantly this wasn’t a scenario the UN, Interpol, or the U.S. military would jump on at first sight. If Kurt was right about any of it, the entire situation was a giant can of worms. One with the potential to make people terribly uncomfortable. The powers that be would open it slowly. In the meantime, the experiments and torture and death occurring on whatever island the young man had come from would continue.

Rudi knew that. Kurt knew it as well. “And if they’re not available?”

“Then Joe and I will do it,” Kurt said.

“You’d have to bring back proof,” Rudi said. “Acres of it.”

“We’ll get it,” Kurt insisted. “Just tell us where to look.”

Rudi nodded. “I’ll have Max work on the drift plot. In the meantime, is there another way to contact you, or am I running NUMA out of a sandwich shop for the foreseeable future?”

Kurt hesitated. “Uhhh…”

“That’s what I thought,” Rudi said. “Hopefully this place makes a good Reuben.”