The South Florida Offshore Tourism Redevelopment Zone #5
“Here’s how I see it,” said Roger, “which is that you are hiding because of what you did to undermine the neuroscanning program for the studio. There’s a lot of back chatter on this, and I’ve pieced together a pretty clear timeline.
You destroyed the laboratory—arson is the word I’ve heard used—in January 2044, then found some way to smuggle yourself off the island.
You arrived in England that same year. You have never left, even when your already questionably obtained visa expired.
You’ve kept yourself anonymous, but you don’t want to go to the United States, not even to visit your mother. ”
Lilly said nothing.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Your mother is dead. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Yeah, who would have contacted you? Who could have? Right, nobody? Now what I can’t figure out exactly is why you are hanging out with these nerds who are obsessed with the characters you used to create. Guilt? Perversion? I don’t know, I don’t really care. But I do need you to help me.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Not really. You didn’t tell me about Glenn. But that’s okay. Now you can help me talk to him. It would be a shame if your visa became an issue.”
Roger wanted the neuroscanner. To what end, Lilly wasn’t sure. Not to use it, she divined that much. But he seemed to think Glenn could help him get it, and Lilly would help him get Glenn.
That was how Lilly found herself poring over stolen schematics and preparing to climb down the outside of a hotel that rose a hundred feet above the sea.
Roger forced Lilly to go with him. He suspected no one else would be quite as effective in interrogating Glenn.
He arranged her travel and gave her a phone, reminding her that it was important to maintain constant communication and that running away would not, at this juncture, be in her best interest.
The Miami Comic-Con was their best chance, but it was also a busy, high-profile affair.
The plans were clear: The VIP suite was exactly ten floors below the conference center, and exactly right beneath the window in the southeast corner of the surplus storage room.
One of Roger’s contacts confirmed that the VIP suite would be housing the special guest, a secret Malicarn star being flown in for the weekend, and Roger’s agent estimated that the average time a person could travel from the stage in Hall B to the VIP suite, assuming some delay for security protocols, was just under three minutes.
Roger didn’t want to leave earlier and risk walking in on a housekeeper. He also wanted to visually identify Glenn himself first. “That’s what old-timers would do,” he said to Lilly the night in London he came over to lay out the details of his little operation.
“Why aren’t we meeting at your office?” Lilly asked.
Roger gave a rambling response about how this operation was off-book, how he had to travel quickly so as not to raise any red flags, but don’t worry it’s all on the level and Head Office will really appreciate everything you’re doing in the end, and Lilly suddenly realized that she was once again at the mercy of an idiot.
Roger procured fake passports, transportation, a little bit of money.
Lilly thought her cover persona—Penny, a computer systems analyst who grew up in Toronto—was lazy, but she certainly wasn’t interested in traveling to the United States under her real name, in the event someone from the studio was still on the lookout for her.
It took sixty seconds for them to climb down ten floors, ten seconds for Roger to use a pick—also hidden in his watch—to pop the window, and ten more for both of them to slide inside.
Roger forgot to shut the window and they both crossed the large living room and waited in the bedroom.
Twenty seconds later the door opened. Roger took out his gun.
They heard the door close, and a man let out a long sigh before walking into the bedroom.
“Hello, Glenn,” Lilly said.
He turned and saw her, his face blank, almost without expression. That was the Glenn she remembered.
“Lilly?” Glenn asked, after staring at her for an obnoxiously long time. “You’re here? What’s—what’s going on?”
“You better sit down,” Roger said. “We’re going to have a conversation.”
Glenn sat on the bed, his blankness turning to anxiety and eventually alarm. Roger walked to the other side of the room and Lilly sat on the far side of the bed, facing Glenn.
“We’re not going to tie you up or anything,” Roger said. “Technically you’re free to go. If you can go anywhere.”
Glenn rocked on the mattress. “What do you want?”
“First of all, nice to meet you,” Roger said. “I’m Roger, you know Lilly.” He waved. Lilly did not move.
“The convention security will find you. If you think you can ransom me or—”
“Oh, don’t think so highly of yourself,” Roger said. “We’ll be gone in about twenty minutes, if you cooperate. More than enough time to take a nap before you sign autographs.”
“Okay, that’s enough, Roger,” Lilly said. “We don’t have time for this. Glenn, where is the neuroscanner?”
“What?”
“The neuroscanner? When I left the Malicarn, I told you one neuroscanner remained. Do you know what happened to it?”
Glenn looked back and forth between the two of them. “I don’t understand.”
“Jesus, Glenn,” Lilly shouted. “Roger is with British Intelligence. MI6.”
“Like James Bond,” said Roger.
“He thinks the neuroscanner still exists and he wants to find it.”
“I’m just, I’m confused,” Glenn said. “But you … you’re okay? They didn’t hurt you? Where have you—”
“Glenn, goddamnit, what do you know?” Lilly shouted, surprising herself. His passivity still angered her. Whatever pity she felt for Glenn onscreen or onstage was gone.
“But you’re all right?” Glenn asked.
“She’s fine,” Roger said. “She’s living her best life, or something.”
“You made her do this?”
Roger groaned. “I thought you would be really vain, but not dim.”
“Glenn,” Lilly said. “If you tell us what we need to know, I’ll tell you everything.”
Glenn nodded but didn’t speak for several seconds. “I know where the neuroscanner is. It’s still in the Malicarn. It even works. Jules uses it, all the time, but he’s kept it secret.”
“What does he do with it?” Roger asked.
“He writes scripts. He’s been using it to help him write for years.”
“He has a machine that can remake minds,” Roger asked, “and he uses it write scripts?”
“Yeah, he’s a writer. That’s what he does.”
“Where’s Jules usually at?” Roger asked. “Does he travel with the scanner around the island?”
“No, not at all. He hardly goes anywhere. He’s mostly in the writers’ room at the Citadel. That’s the administration building. He doesn’t leave for meetings, anything.”
“Do you ever use the scanner?” Roger asked.
“Of course not. I try to stay away from the Citadel as much as I can. It’s always a bit dramatic there. The pilot is only making things worse.”
“The what?”
“The Chinese pilot? You’re British Intelligence, I thought maybe you knew.”
Roger did not, and after Glenn filled them in, Roger left the bedroom to make a phone call. He was giddy. Lilly and Glenn were left alone.
“Lilly, I just need you to know,” Glenn said, “that the queen is safe. Don’t worry, I kept her safe.”
“The fuck do I care if she’s safe?”
“I just … I tried.”
Lilly couldn’t think of any possible response that wasn’t filled with curses before Roger came back. “All right, well now who’s laughing at Roger Pendleton, right? This is big, this really turns the entire operation up a notch. There’s not even time for them to ream me out before we deploy.”
“Roger, what are you talking about?”
“The Portuguese are already sitting offshore of Madeira with two battleships. They have two tanks in Funchal, a couple of companies of marines, and an air force helicopter. A Black Hawk! A big one! They’ve been ready to invade their own territory for over a month to extract the pilot, which they seem to have known was there all this time.
Evidently the Americans know all about the pilot, too, so the Portuguese are ready to go in.
My colleague in Lisbon tells me he can get me onto the helicopter in exchange for whatever intelligence I have about the pilot’s location.
You can get that for me, right Glenn? They want to get in and out, avoid a mess.
And while they’re nabbing him, I go in on the chopper, get the neuroscanner.
How about that, eh? Head Office can’t stop me now. ”
Glenn nodded, trying to seem enthusiastic. “Yes, yes. I could probably find the pilot, if I could see the feeds. The camera feeds. Jules doesn’t like me watching them anymore, because it makes the story fresher, or something.”
“So I really need to talk to Jules, not this chump.”
“Oh, please don’t kill me!”
“He’s not going to kill you,” Lilly said. “You don’t really know anything.”
Glenn looked at her, but there was no way for her to read his face, to understand what he wanted. Did he want to leave the Malicarn? Maybe not. Maybe he was happy being a wizard and running that little kingdom. Maybe he wanted nothing at all.
“I can help you get onto set,” he said.
“I don’t need you,” Roger said. “The Portuguese will let me do whatever I want.”
“But Jules will see you coming. If he knows you’re coming for the neuroscanner, he’ll destroy it, or blow himself up, or something, and you won’t have it. He’s not right in the head.”
“Why should we trust you?” asked Lilly.
“Because, Lilly … because I’m not a bad person.”
“Now, listen,” Roger said, moving back to the foot of the bed, totally uninterested in this, “we’re going to leave you here in your hotel room and then you will go back to the Comic-Con. But if we let you do that, are you going to snitch on us?”
“No, of course not! I really can help. I can get the neuroscanner, it’ll be easy for me to take it.
And I can find out where the pilot is. Then I can meet you.
I know a spot. It’s a meadow on the northeast end of the set.
The river runs half a mile or so east of it.
There used to be a gas station there. They demolished it but the land is all poisoned or something, and there’s no grass.
You can still see the concrete slabs where the station used to be.
They don’t ever do scenes there because it looks too modern, so there’s no cameras.
It’s a day’s walk from the Old Village, and it’s usually deserted.
It’s about as far northeast as you can go before you leave the set. In and out, right?”
“You can get there?” Lilly asked. “With the neuroscanner?”
“Yes.”
Lilly looked at Roger. “And you could meet him there? Would that be hard?”
Roger shrugged. “Not particularly. Quick is good. I don’t care what Jules or anyone else does after we leave. Frankly, for my purposes I don’t even care if the Portuguese rescue the pilot or not, long as they think I helped them. You fly back tomorrow, right? Can you be at the spot in two days?”
“Two days? That’s not much time, I—”
“Two days,” Roger said. “Dawn. I can hold the op off until then but no longer. If you’re not there I’m going to assume you’ve snitched.”
Glenn nodded, trying not to shake too much. “You’ll be there, right Lilly?”
“What? I don’t think—”
“Do you not trust me?” Roger asked. “Is it going to be a problem?”
“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “Are you holding her? Is she your prisoner?”
Roger sighed. “She’ll be there, if it means you cooperate.”
“Wait, what?” Lilly asked. “Roger, I—”
“You’ll be there, goddamnit. Now let’s go, and let’s all hope this pilot isn’t killed before we arrive.”
Lilly stood up, but Glenn reached out and grabbed her hand.
“Lilly, please, I need more time.”
She pulled her hand away. “I asked you to destroy it and you never did. You’ve done this to yourself. Get the neuroscanner, meet us in two days, and then we’ll talk.”
“At dawn,” Roger said. “We’ll fly in under cover of darkness. It’ll be fun!”
Glenn opened his mouth to plead something more, but Lilly turned and walked away before he could speak.
Ten minutes later, Roger and Lilly had climbed back up to the storage room, had packed away their gear, and were mingling once again in the main convention lobby.
They split up and went back to their own rooms. Lilly didn’t see Roger again until that afternoon, when they climbed aboard the ferryboat taking them to the airport.
Lilly stood at the bow of the ship, watching the hotel shrink into the distance.
Behind it, a faraway shore was smoking with rubble and debris.
“Sorry to volunteer you.” It was Roger, who appeared suddenly beside her, leaning over the ship’s railing.
“But there’s not much time to set up this op.
We’ll have to fly straight to Lisbon, and the Portuguese navy will get us onto their ships.
Plus, you know the terrain. Useful, on-the-ground intel.
We’ll pay you, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t care about that. I didn’t want to go back there, to that place.”
“It’ll be fast. You can tell people you’re a secret agent now.”
“I don’t want that. I don’t want anything else.”
Roger shrugged. “Well, we’ll pay you anyway.
Makes me feel better when I don’t owe you anything.
” He pulled out a pipe, loaded it with tobacco, and lit it.
Then he chuckled. “You didn’t tell me he was so gullible, though.
I wish I could get more people to do what I want by making them think I’m going to screw them. ”
“You’re a fucking asshole, Roger.” Lilly turned and walked into the ferry’s cabin, where she ordered a gin and tonic from the bar and decided not to watch the horizons shrink away behind her anymore.