Page 86 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)
The Golěm knelt on the pink marble floor, deeply depleted after his struggle.
Gathering his strength to move and hide the body, he was pleased to find his victim’s corpse far lighter than Harris’s had been.
He dragged the woman with little effort, dumping her out of sight behind a couch that sat near the side wall.
He considered stealing the woman’s handgun, but he had never had the opportunity to learn how to fire one, and he much preferred the simplicity and silence of the stun gun.
The Golěm now moved to the wall sculpture and slid the heavy piece of art aside, revealing the elevator he had ascended minutes ago to catch the woman by surprise.
The elevator’s security keypad glowed before him, and he carefully typed in Gessner’s seven-character passcode, recalling her terror last night.
She told me everything…as anyone in her position would.
As the elevator descended one floor, The Golěm closed his eyes, recalling with satisfaction his interrogation method, which utilized a machine his victim herself had invented.
Gessner’s EPR pod was designed for fully anesthetized, unconscious patients in conjunction with intravenous fentanyl—the most powerful painkiller on earth—which would block the excruciating sensation of having your circulatory system flushed with ice-cold saline.
The Golěm, however, had simply buckled her in, skipping anesthesia and securing her wrists and ankles with the pod’s heavy Velcro straps.
The machine’s IVs were designed for femoral arteries and veins, but he inserted the catheters into her arms instead, which he imagined would provide just enough flow to keep her conscious to experience the agony.
The elevator opened automatically to Gessner’s lab, and The Golěm made his way through the dim light, his cloak billowing behind him, casting ghostly shadows on the stone walls. This time, he was alone in the bastion, and he would not be interrupted.
I will need only a minute to retrieve what I came for.
Then he would head for the secret facility known as Threshold.
The trauma of being abducted had not faded for Jonas Faukman, and having now learned that Robert and Katherine had been lured into the residence of a former CIA attorney, he could only hope they had taken his advice and gotten the hell out of there.
Call me, Robert. Let me know you’re okay…
Alex Conan had been pecking away at his laptop, performing a deep dive on In-Q-Tel. Faukman was fiercely interested in knowing why the investment firm would be so opposed to whatever was in Katherine’s manuscript.
“Have a look at this,” Alex finally said. “It’s a partial list of Q’s private investment holdings.”
Faukman darted over and looked at the screen over the tech’s shoulder, eyeing the firm’s catalog in disbelief. There were more than three hundred entries, mostly in language that was indecipherable to him.
MemSQL—synchronous analytics Boundless Spatial
Xanadu—photonic quantum solutions
Keyhole—geospatial visualization
zSpace—3D holographic sculpting
The list went on and on.
“This looks like what I’d expect,” Alex said, quickly scanning the list. “What I recognize is mostly cybersecurity, data analytics, imaging, computing…”
“How about neuroscience or consciousness— that sort of thing?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. We need to throw this list into a da—” Alex’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at the caller ID, drawing a fortifying breath before answering. “Allison, good morning. I was just—”
Faukman could hear the data security director yelling on the other end of the line.
“I understand,” Alex said calmly. “I’ll be right there.” He ended the call and stood up. “Sorry, interrogation time.”
Faukman felt for the kid. Considering PRH had been hacked by a global intelligence agency, this was not exactly a fair fight, and Alex had handled the crisis admirably.
“I’ll be back when I can,” the tech said, before appearing to have another thought and typing quickly on his laptop. “I just copied and sent you that list; throw it into a DAP and look for any crossover.”
“Wait! What? What’s DAP! I don’t have one!”
“Yes, you do, ” Alex said patiently, heading for the door. “There’s an entire suite of data analytics platforms on the PRH server for your use.”
Faukman had no idea even where to look.
“Never mind,” Alex said, “just use an online engine—ChatGPT or Bard or something. Tell it to analyze Q’s investments and cross-reference them with whatever topics you think are relevant to Dr. Solomon’s book. I’ll be back when I can.”
With that, Alex rushed off.
Faukman stood alone in his office, casting a wary eye at his computer.
He’d seen artificial intelligence apps, of course, but he’d sworn publicly never to use them.
An existential threat to the noble craft of writing!
PRH was already receiving submissions that clearly had been written by robots, but they were getting alarmingly harder and harder to spot.
Faukman had taken a defiant stand—urging his fellow editors to boycott all AI products in the face of the coming literary apocalypse.
Now, however, Faukman found himself at a crossroads. As he opened the email Alex had sent him and eyed the list of Q’s investments, he pictured the egregious abuses the shadowy organization had imposed on Katherine…on Robert…and on Faukman himself.
Screw ethical fortitude, he decided, sitting down at his machine. This is war.